Explore every episode of the podcast The Idea Climbing Podcast

In our more and more AI driven world meaningful relationships are harder to come by and maintain over time. We’re getting more and more disconnected from our social and professional circles. We’re using AI tools because we think they will make everything better. We think they will make doing business easier, which is true in some cases. They look fancy, they have cool reporting, so we think we’ll get more leads and then maybe we’ll get more clients. Unfortunately, often they’re putting layers of separation between us and our prospects and clients. When that happens, we don’t really understand what’s going on with our business outreach. We start to make up scenarios because we don’t have all the personal information to go alongside the data. We can end up not knowing much personal information about many of our prospects, instead we could primarily know what AI tells us about them.     I discuss how to create meaningful relationships in this AI driven world with my guest, Casey Cheshire. Casey is a seasoned marketer with over two decades of experience and the author of “Marketing Automation Unleashed,” a guide to leveraging marketing technology for business growth. As the founder and CEO of Ringmaster Conversational Marketing, a B2B podcasting agency, he helps businesses build authentic connections with their audiences. The Unfortunate Trend of Weakening Ties Prospect and client relationships are weakening. We no longer remember many of their names off the top of our heads, we certainly don’t know what’s keeping them up at night, so we just make up what we think is keeping them up at night. Then our products and our services start to morph in that direction. No wonder that email campaign you just sent out only got crickets back. Or maybe you had a webinar, and nobody showed up or just a few people did. AI is one of the big reasons. You wanted an in-person or virtual room full of people; why were those marketing messages falling flat? Because you’re disconnected, you didn’t know what your prospects wanted because you put apps in the way. The crazy thing is that AI isn’t making those scenarios easier. AI isn’t getting us more connected; it’s adding more noise to our world. Let me get this straight, it’s always been noisy but now it’s getting noisier. AI is behind tons of content, tons of marketing strategies, and at times it’s having fake conversations with people. Overall, it’s just going to be a noisier world for everyone. We’re not going to be able to do more of the same or do better than the status quo unless something changes. The old ways of doing business just aren’t working anymore. We must pivot hard to avoid getting wrapped up in all that disconnected noise. Getting Started on the Journey of Cutting Through the Noise How can you reconnect with your existing network or connect with new prospects or potential referral sources? It’s a revolutionary thought: By making calls. Having one-on-one calls whether you’re the founder or the marketer and so on. In the case of sales roles, they’ll reach out, but that’s a different kind of outreach. We need to be reaching out to learn, to ask personal questions, not just to make a sale. It means you’re asking things like what are your goals this year? What are you trying to achieve? What are your responsibilities? What are the things that are really bothering you? Get to know their real wants and needs. We’re not really inquiring. Sometimes if we do get on the phone with people, we’re just pitching them. We’re soft pitching and we’re not really listening to them. We’re just looking for an opportunity to talk about our product or service. We’ve got to take a step back and have a conversation where we’re trying to learn about the other person. Things change all the time. It makes it harder for you because you think you know everything. For example, when you think you understand the customer because you are marketers selling to marketers or manufactu...

Everyone faces emotional downturns, especially entrepreneurs. We can get caught up in a negative story. We can get caught up in an emotion that keeps us from achieving our goals. It is possible to get to that healthy place where you can feel happiness, joy, and the full spectrum of positive emotions.     Sometimes you’re going to feel anger, sometimes you’re going to feel sadness or defeat. You can come back to the joy of living and take your personal and business lives to the next level with the right strategies. I discuss some of those strategies in this episode with my guest, Dr. Dorothy A. Martin-Neville. Dorothy A. Martin-Neville, PhD, is a speaker, author, consultant and master coach. She has been featured on the Oprah Winfrey Network as well as the New York Times, the Huffington Post, NBC, and ABC. As a psychotherapist, Dr. Dorothy (or “Dr. D”) was in practice for 25+ years. As the founder of four companies, Dr. Dorothy has knowledge of the challenges facing leaders in business and in life. As a Business & Life Coach, her focus is on Mindfulness, Emotional Intelligence, and NLP. The Stories We Tell Ourselves When Dr. D works with folks, she asks questions such as what’s that bad place about? How did you get there? What’s the story you’re telling yourself in that moment? When you’re in a bad place you’re always telling yourself a story. You need to get to the root cause of that story. The story could be you’re focusing on one incident in your life and that’s the filter through which you see everything. So, if you were abused as a child you’re going to see abuse everywhere in your life. If somebody doesn’t return a phone call, they’re abusive. If somebody doesn’t recognize you at a networking event, they’re being abusive and so on. We create filters through which we see the world. If you’re in a funk Dr. D’s first thought is to examine what’s going on in your life, what is it you’re caught up in? If you can look at what you’re caught up in and begin to put that in the big picture you can get context for the situation. You’ll see there’s some legitimacy to what you’re saying but there’s a whole other big picture around it. You can choose to focus on that problem piece or see it in the perspective of the bigger picture. That will help you begin to shift your focus. Shifting Your Focus to Shift Your Story Dr. D trains folks to do a reality check. Let’s say you’re going through a divorce. All the sudden you’re caught up in betrayal, abandonment and other similar feelings. Ok, that’s what you’re experiencing, and legitimately so. How can you get beyond that? You have the option of spending the rest of your life in that space. Or you can recognize that’s a horrible thing that’s happening, it’s not what you’ve planned for your life but it’s there. How can you get through it and come out on the other side? Where do you want to land when you reach the other side? It’s not denial of what’s real for you in that moment. But that’s the situation that you’re in; that’s the period of life you’re going through. The funk happens when you’re caught up in a period of life and you see that as your whole life. How can you go through that and learn from it? What do you need to learn about yourself and life in general? Answering those questions will, again, shift your focus to the bigger, more positive picture. Challenges in Your Personal and Business Lives When you’re an entrepreneur it’s impossible not to have problems affect both your personal and business lives. Your personal life affects your business life, and your business life affects your personal life. You need to separate the life you’re living from the reality of who you are. If you’re consumed emotionally with what’s going on in your personal life that’s time you’re taking away from your business life. Emotionally it has you in a bad head space personally instead of focusing on your business. At that point your business is paying the price.

If you can align yourself with a speakers bureau your public speaking business can grow exponentially. I discuss how to do that in this episode with my guest, Brian Palmer.     Brian is the Senior Vice President of Premiere Speakers Bureau and a respected leader in the speaking industry. With decades of experience, Brian has built a reputation for helping business professionals select the perfect speakers for their events. He does this by delivering engaging, relevant, and high-impact presentations that align with organizational objectives. Brian’s Journey into The Professional Speaking World In 1972 when Brian was a freshman in high school his dad started National Speakers Bureau. His dad was a band leader who got tired of traveling all over the country. He decided to do something on the fringes of the entertainment business. The speaking industry seemed like a fit. Brian started with envelope licking and note card sorting. During college Brian worked there during the summers. In 1980 he finished college, and he started working at National Speakers Bureau full time and he’s been around ever since. For reference for the rest of this post: National Speakers Bureau was eventually purchased by Premiere Speakers Bureau (PSB) and Brian stayed on board as a Vice President. The Process of Booking Professional Speakers There’s a variety of ways to book great speakers. PSB has established themselves as a great place to turn to when you need a good speaker. People reach out to them, describe a situation where they need a speaker, give them their criteria and their budget parameters. They make recommendations and provide potential clients with the means with which to plan for an outstanding event. That includes biography, presentation descriptions, video samples and more. Proposals started out long ago with audio cassette tapes. Now it’s obviously video and it’s a lot easier now through online video. Many buyers are also very interested in testimonials from past speaking engagements. Sometimes people have other questions and PSB tries move the process along and help people make a decision that they’re happy about. Then, once it’s booked, PSB handles all the arrangements in a way that builds the buyer’s confidence. The speaker shows up prepared, ready to go, ready to make a contribution to that organization’s objectives. They speak, they get a lot of applause, the client’s really happy because their boss says “That was a great choice”. The Process of Vetting and then Working with Professional Speakers To a certain degree, Brian knows an outstanding speaker when he sees one. He studied speech in college and some of what he learned makes a good speech back then still applies today. Sometimes he prefers to watch full speeches. He watches a speech, watches the stories they tell, how relevant they are to the audience, how personalized the presentation is, and so on. One thing Brian does is study how much time elapses between a laugh or some kind of emotive response. All those things factor together to delineate a good speaker from an excellent speaker. There are so many people that want to speak, and Brian chooses to recommend people who are excellent. PSB books over 2,000 engagements a year and their clients rate the speaker, and they rate the speaker as well. They consider things such as how cooperative the speaker is, how good they are at personalizing the presentation, how they work with PSB overall. All those things combine to drive the recommendations that they make. Speakers Bureaus: Do They Approach You or do You Approach Them? When PSB learns about a speaker that they’re not involved with, and they hear the speaker does a great job or PSB loses business to somebody repeatedly that gets their attention. Speakers often refer other speakers that they’ve seen or that they’re friends with. On average PSB hears from 30 people a day interested in PSB booking speeches for them.

Community engagement and content marketing go hand in hand if you have the right strategies. I discuss how to combine the two in this episode with my guest, Behdad Jamshidi. In the past 6 years, Behdad (or Bee) has met with and assessed 992+ marketing agencies and vetted them down to a lean 100+ preferred partners across all marketing niches. After pairing hundreds of businesses with the right partners, he’s found his skillset lies in the matchmaking process.     Getting Started with Community Engagement and Content Marketing Bee specializes in connecting businesses with the right marketing partners. He got into that space by engaging with a variety of communities. During COVID everything hit a wall, and everyone rushed into online communities for engagement. In one of the communities that he was in he built up his brand and landed a lot of customers by sharing knowledge and sharing information. In those communities people got to know him over the course of three years. That’s how he got into the community engagement and content marketing space. Bee’s purpose was to always share value first; he loves learning about new ideas and sharing content. Bee wasn’t trying to sell, and he was adding value and as a result potential clients reached out to him. Sharing the Right Kind of Content for Marketing Bee shared his experiences growing as an entrepreneur, including trials and tribulations. He was always learning more and more from mentors and other business owners. Bee realized that not everyone gets access to those people at the level that he did. He learned about new concepts and ideas through those conversations he would then take it in and journal about it. From there Bee would create content around his journal entries in various communities. Bee learned about some common mistakes that businesses make when they’re trying to pick the right marketing partner and then shared how to avoid them. Some questions included, “I’m about to hire a business coach, what should I think about?” Then afterwards he would share “I hired this business coach, here’s what I learned.”  You create a continuity of business advice within those communities. Making Deeper Community Engagement Connections Bee spent a lot of time learning on calls. He’s a super connector in the marketing world, so he was always on calls. The byproduct of those calls turned into meaningful content. He also went to a lot of in-person networking events. At those networking events he would create deeper connections with the people that he interacted with online. That’s where a lot of the content would come from. Bee used to be an engineer. He would do sales engineering for businesses that were in the 50 to 1,000 employee range. So, he got a lot of content and a lot of knowledge from his past work experience that he could share. Bee was unique because most entrepreneurs that are running purely entrepreneurial businesses haven’t worked in or with large organizations. When you come in with insights that others don’t have you have unique content to share. How to Stand Out and be Remembered Through Content Marketing You must discover what your core theme is. What do you like to talk about? You can even start out easily, with “This is who I am, this is a little bit of my background, here’s what I love talking about, here’s how I can support you”. Just be an open book. The next piece after that is to continue sharing what you know that most people don’t know. For Bee it was seeing businesses constantly failing with marketing partners. He provided feedback in his communities about how to avoid those mistakes. That’s where a lot of his content started out, it was just what he was naturally doing. That content helped Bee focus on the topic that would become the core of his business. We also dive into topics such as: How to keep the attention of the people in the community after you get it so you’re more than just a blip on their radar.

“All the world is a stage” is very true, especially in the business world. By becoming an engaging presenter you can succeed from sales meetings to training presentations to speeches. I discuss how to do that in this episode.     Today, we have a game-changer in the world of communication—David D. Doerrier. With a background spanning radio broadcasting, stage acting, corporate training, and even playing Santa Claus, David specializes in helping subject matter experts, business leaders, and sales professionals transform their technical expertise into engaging, high-impact presentations. He had to learn how to get his information to stick with his audiences, which he has done successfully. David also comes from being very shy and introverted to becoming comfortable and gregarious on stage. He discovered that one way to do that is by making it more about the audience and less about him. That’s a perspective shift from many speakers’ viewpoints. It’s Not About You; It IS All About Your Audience The first thing you have to do is start with your objectives in mind. Let’s use a training session as an example. Ask yourself, “At the end of this training session what are the things that my audience needs to walk away with and understand better?” Not only understanding it better but at what level do they need to understand it? Do they need to be an expert when they leave the training? Do they just need to have some knowledge when they leave the training? So first it’s understanding what the objectives are that you need to achieve. So, now again, that’s all about them. It has nothing to do with you or your background or what you think you need to teach. It’s first understanding what it is that they need and what it is that they want to get out of your training. Your “Stage” Could be Anywhere Many people think they don’t “do” any public speaking because they don’t get up in front of a room on a stage. When David says “engage from any stage” what he means by “any stage” is it could be anywhere. It could be on a Zoom call, on a podcast, it could be a sales call, it could be a workshop, a physical stage in front of a room full of people and more. What platform or what process are you using to communicate with your audience? Are you mentoring someone? Are you training someone? Are you selling to people? The techniques that David talks about can be used in any of those situations, when you’re talking to one person or hundreds of people. Sales Blends with Training A caveat here is that David is not a sales coach. However, what he does applies to sales people to connect better with their audiences. The processes that he has come from his background as an instructional designer. How can you create material that is going to stick in the mind of your audience? The more he worked with it, the more he saw that anybody (including salespeople) could benefit from those types of principles. In some ways there is an overlap with training and sales. Because as a salesperson you must educate your audience enough for them to say “Yes!” to purchasing your offering. Whereas if you’re training a group of people you’ve got to educate them enough, so they say “Okay, I see how I can use these new strategies”. The sales process is first understanding your audience, the same thing as with training. You first must understand who your audience is. What is their learning style? What is their buying style? And then adjusting to that scenario. Preparing for Your Presentations It’s a mix of interviews before you give the presentation and figuring it out on the fly during your presentation. There are questionnaires that can go out beforehand to help you evaluate your audience. Let’s use a training example, certainly in that situation. You can reach out to the organizer and get an idea of the make-up of the group and try to get as much information about them as possible beforehand. In a sales situation,

Creating and scaling your own networking group is an excellent investment of your time. The rewards can be great and far reaching. I discuss how to do that in this episode with my guest, Clay Hicks.   Clay is a serial entrepreneur with a portfolio of 5 different companies, an author, a speaker, and trainer on professional relationships. Clay Hicks founded his first company, H7 Network in 2008, in the hopes of positively impacting the many under-served entrepreneurs and all sales professionals. Many years ago, Clay was searching for and trying out a variety of networking groups. More often than not he left each one more disappointed than anything else. Most of them judged people by how many referrals they were giving and how much money they made without much thought for meaningful relationships. They were very transactional and that didn’t sit well with Clay. He decided to start H7 Network to do things the way he believed was right. Build Your Leadership Team Early On First, he surrounded himself with five leaders that helped him start the group. That support system was crucial to their early success. It wasn’t just one person trying to figure everything out alone. The team framed out their first style of networking group which was 60 second commercials and a speaker. He began to build more meaningful relationships and that changed everything. There was no pressure to give referrals, Clay and his team let that happen organically. Clay has always looked for potential in other people. He doesn’t see them just for who they are, he also sees them for who they could be and how valuable having a relationship with them could be for both people. So, when he went to make those choices early on, he picked people he had or could have a good relationship with. Those were the early days of his “Connect, Serve, and Ask” methodology. He knew back then he couldn’t do it without them and knows today that he still couldn’t do it without his team. He and the original board went their separate ways and Clay turned to his existing network from his real estate industry days. He invited the people to join H7 leadership that he already at least had a connection with, and explained what he was creating. Clay’s a natural promoter. The people he invited to join him also had relationships to share. Everyone was involved with invited people to the meetings. Getting Traction for Attendance in Your Early Days They started free so the traction gained was around getting people into the room. The attendees in turn brought more people from their networks to the meetings. Clay had to make the structure of the meetings interesting and valuable. The meetings started with attendees sharing celebrations of the good things that were going on in their lives. That immediately created positive energy in the room. Then there was the value-add component. He shared strategies to network effectively with his “Connect, Serve, and Ask” methodology. They would do 60 second commercials with a unique, non-traditional format. He then encouraged the attendees to continue their conversations and set up 1-to-1 meetings after the event. The push for 1:1 meetings created value between the meetings because people were having more meaningful conversations than they had time for at the events. Soon they began to charge and people began to see it as more valuable. They grew by 60 members in their first six months. Once they hit 60 members some of his support system left so Clay had to update his support system with new people. The big lesson here for you is to get some support from strong relationships, even if its an informal board of advisors, as soon as possible when starting your group. Lone wolf to pack. You can go fast by yourself, or you can further by surrounding yourself with good people. Your relationships are the key to your success! In this episode we dive into topics such as: How to know if you have strong relationships.

Today we’re discussing how to develop yourself personally and professionally to become a great podcaster. My guest is Junaid Ahmed. Junaid is the Founder of Humblezone and Creator of Home Studio Mastery, designed to teach you how to build your home studio.  He has two decades of video production experience, as well as designing websites & apps focused on a systematic process and seamless user experience.  He provides podcasters, speakers, and content creators with a comprehensive plan for their studio equipment, lighting, and layout.     Junaid started his creative career creating fliers for his uncle’s business over 30 years ago. He then grew into graphic design, mobile app design, he just found himself creating, creating, creating. It wasn’t until 2005 that he discovered podcasting, but he didn’t really get into it until 2012 when a friend of his wanted to start a podcast. Junaid ended up starting a podcast with two of his friends that lasted for four episodes. While that run ended abruptly, Junaid was bitten by the podcasting bug. He wanted to get back into podcasting, but he just didn’t have the drive until he read the book “Crushing It” by Gary Vaynerchuck. Gary wrote “Just go and document your journey…” Junaid started a podcast documenting his journey into becoming a podcaster, a beekeeper, and other hobbies he’s had. Junaid says podcasting is elevating because when you empty your mind, when you put stuff down in Audio Note you’re releasing space in your brain to do other things and that’s how you start developing your personality. What does using podcasting as a self-improvement tool mean to you? When Junaid went to college for English Composition his teacher said, “Just free write, write whatever comes into your mind”. She was trying to get him to empty his mind because over time, your writing becomes more refined. Junaid views podcast through the same lens because the more you record, the clearer your messaging becomes over time. As you’re recording the episodes you get to go back and listen to and critique yourself. You’ll get better as you do more of it. From that perspective it helped him develop his speaking voice, from his ability to talk about a topic or to teach him how to overcome something that he once struggled with. What advice do you have for new podcasters about interviewing? To become a good interviewer, you’ve got to be able to articulate the point of the interview. To get moving you can start out as a solo podcaster. When Junaid started his podcast, it was just him talking about what he was going through with his hobbies. The more he did that the more he understood how to tell a story. It still wasn’t as refined as what he wanted it to be, so he started inviting his friends to be interviewed. The more he did that, especially with people he already knew, the better he got. It’s easier to talk to somebody you already know. It’s hard to talk to somebody brand new unless you have topics that you share a passion with. Another way to be a good interviewer is to research who you’re going to be interviewing. We’ve seen some great examples of that, particularly people like Simon Sinek and Jimmy Fallon. They research the people they’re going to be interviewing. You can do the same thing. When possible, watch previous interviews of your future guests to know what other people are asking them and then ask different questions. Suggestions for Finding Good Guests A good guest is only as good as the topic that you’re going to come and talk about. It all comes down to the purpose of the podcast episode that you’re going to record. It all comes down to the focus of your podcast and what you are going to be talking about. This is decided by knowing who your target audience is. This will help the guest who’s taking time out to record the episode get a ton of value as well. We also dive into topics such as: How large or small of a niche should you pick as the topic of your podcast.

There are almost too many ways to go about creating social media strategies. I discuss some strategies that actually work with my guest, Sophie Zollmann. Sophie is the Founder of FMD Strategic Partners. They take the guess work out of marketing to get real results for 7 and 8 figure service providers.     Sophie was a stay-at-home mom and got into online businesses instead of paying daycare all her money. Customer service, business management, clerical work, etc. Then in 2009, after a short break, she came back to the work world and launched herself as a virtual assistant. One of the first things she did to get in front of people was to get on social media. She got on Twitter and Facebook, and six months later after meeting other virtual assistants and business owners who needed social media help, she had a business model, and she formed an LLC. She used digital marketing, especially social media, to grow her business. In the process, she fell in love with social media. It’s become the bread and butter of her business. Sophie built a team and leverages their skills to help her clients grow their businesses like she has hers. Where People Go Wrong with Social Media Marketing The biggest thing is that they don’t have a strategy. People are throwing spaghetti against the wall to see what sticks, they’re trying the latest trends that may or may not work for them, and they may be on platforms that they don’t need to be on because they think they have to be everywhere. They’re also doing it themselves, even though oftentimes they dislike doing it. That dislike is reflected in what’s produced and only ends up hurting them in the long run. If you don’t love it, you really shouldn’t do it because your distaste come through in your copy. Last but not least is people don’t have a strategy and a clear plan. They aren’t creating initiatives and campaigns that have measurable components such as KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), goals and objectives. Success comes from knowing what works. You’ve got to be able to measure what you’re doing. Once you know what works, then you can maximize that. But you can’t figure that out without strategy, hiring people to do it for you, and having measurable campaigns and initiatives that you can know if it’s working or not. How to Get Started with Creating a Social Media Strategy It involves a lot of research. You’ve got to know who your ideal client avatar is. In most cases there’s multiple client avatars. Even in one industry you will have different demographics, psychographics, income levels, all the things that make them human beings. We are marketing to human beings. You must speak to them in a way that they can hear you. Knowing them deeply is a key component of your strategy, that’s your first step. That research dictates what platforms you’re on, what you offer, how you speak about it and what you do to get them in the door. Your strategy must also have your competitive analysis. You must know who your competitors are, how you stand up against them, and how you can beat them. Because if you’re just doing the same thing that they’re doing you’re going to be lost in the sea of all the other people doing those things. You Have to be Unique And then of course once you’ve done that, there is making sure you have a very solid and unique value proposition, that’s a part of your research. You’re going to be looking at branding, do you really look good? Is it consistent and does it appeal to your ideal client? Branding is very important. It all works together. When you have a completely defined strategy that takes in all the aspects of online marketing and what it takes to succeed then you have the monthly marketing plan. That’s where you get your measurable initiatives, you get your content strategy, you figure out where you need to be and where you don’t need to be, then you rearrange everything to make it fit together so that it all feeds each other.

Mentoring programs can skyrocket your organization’s success if you have the right strategies. I discuss those strategies in this episode with my guest, Ken Rusk. Ken is a best-selling author, entrepreneur, and blue-collar advocate that proves there is no degree needed to achieve comfort, peace, and freedom. Ken spent his younger years digging ditches and working in construction.     He is passionate about helping people achieve their dreams regardless of their educational background or past. In Ken's book, Blue-Collar Cash, he shares his insights from over 30 years of working in blue collar trades as an entrepreneur, mentor, and life coach. Why is Mentoring Important? Ken believes it should be incumbent to anyone who is successful to give back to the people that are following in their footsteps. He believes that it’s a good idea to shorten the learning curve of those who follow us because you can prevent them from making a lot of expensive mistakes. That’s just part of being successful to share that kind of advice; especially if those people work for you. To grow your company there’s a lot that you can do to help people within your company that are intrapreneurial at heart to be successful. They win, you win, everyone wins at that point. The Case for Mentoring Intrapreneurial People As the owner of a business, your goal should be a couple of things. Number one, it should be to become as irrelevant to the business as possible from a mechanical daily standpoint. If you’re going to be a visionary you can’t be involved in doing the day-to-day stuff. You need to hand it off to people and make them feel they have some ownership of the results. He’s said in front of his staff of over 200 that he can’t get what he wants, his company can’t get what it needs until all of his employees get what they want first. The more they win the more you’re going to win in the end. Advice for Leaders You must be planning what you want to do with your business, meaning drawing it out to the most minute detail. It’s like creating a brochure that is about yourself. You must have a clear idea of the goals your company is moving towards and why. Once that reason is clear then passing that goal along to the people in your company that you’re mentoring is paramount. You want to get your team to feel like they’re in it for themselves and they relish the fact that they’re allowed to swim in that intrapreneurial pool. When they create results and share ownership of those results your business is poised for explosive growth. We also dive into topics such as: Characteristics of good mentees. How to create successful mentorship experiences for intrapreneurs. How to create a platform for mentorship within your organization. How to approach potential mentors. Why you want to hire people that are self-managing. Advice for bosses about how to be good mentors. Examples of what Ken’s mentoring programs look like. The importance of recognition and bonus plans. Why dropping the ego as a boss/owner will make your business more successful. How to successfully co-create and achieve goals with your employees. The criteria of good goals. The one thing, above all else, that you need to do as an owner/boss to create a mentoring program within your organization. …and other golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”         Click here for more outstanding interviews with entrepreneurs and thought leaders! About My Guest             Ken Rusk is a best-selling author, entrepreneur, and blue-collar advocate showing that there’s no degree required for comfort, peace, and freedom. Ken spent his younger years digging ditches and working in construction. He never went to college. Instead, he made goals, planned, and worked hard for thirty years. Now, Ken is a very successful entrepreneur with mult...

Self-sabotage runs rampant in many professions, especially entrepreneurship. We discuss how to overcome and eventually eliminate self-sabotage in this episode with my guest, Shiraz Baboo. Shiraz is a multi-award-winning author, international speaker, and Reality Interventionist. He is known for helping people to rewrite their reality to overcome challenges in their lives. Shiraz has helped thousands of people to overcome illness, poverty and unconsciously addicted struggles.     Shiraz was stagnant for decades as an entrepreneur. He made about $100,000 a year; but when you’re at that level year after year and it never increases it becomes very, very frustrating. He knew he knew how to make money because he got from nothing to $100,000 but he didn’t know what was going on that had him stuck. Then he had an idea to earn $1 million in one year when he met the people from “The Secret”, including Bob Proctor, John Assaraf and more. Shiraz got their contact information and was going to create an app that involved all of them and their mailing lists. While anticipating success Shiraz’s income went from $100,000 to $0 in two years. He left his business because he was so sure his plan was going to work and started working on the app full time. So Close and Yet So Far Shiraz experienced the effects of self-sabotage. It’s not that his potential business partners didn’t like him, the relationships just started to fizzle out and Shiraz and his app fell off their radar. Shiraz kept trying to develop the app and he kept getting delays. He’d have to go back to them and tell them it’s still not ready. Eventually they gave up and Shiraz gave up. He went back to his old business, and he went right back to earning $100,000 a year. How to Prevent Self Sabotage Many years later Shiraz was presented with another opportunity to start making more money. Shiraz was more self-aware and learned techniques to prevent self-sabotage. He realized the last time he took certain actions his income went down. He didn’t want his income to go down so he searched out and found the reasons his income declined. Shiraz believes that most people don’t realize that you don’t self-sabotage because of circumstance and you oftentimes don’t do it because you’re afraid. You self-sabotage because you’re so comfortable and you’re addicted to that state of status quo.  So, when you leave that state your body goes through withdrawal and your body makes you do things to go back to that space where it’s addicted to, the status quo. The exception is if what you’re trying to do scares you so much it pushes you in the opposite direction. That’s what happened with Shiraz. There was a big fear of earning a million dollars a year. Shiraz worked with a coach and found out when he was a teenager his family and friends told him they had zero doubt that he would be making millions of dollars. His brain went oh my god they’re going to leach off me. If I have a million dollars everyone will want my money. So, his brain decided that at $100,000 a year he would be safe from leaches so that’s where he stayed. Once they got that belief cleared by the next year Shiraz had made over $200,000 and he was on his way! In this episode we also dive into: How to discover and clear your negative beliefs. Why 95% of what’s keeping you from success in your business has nothing to do with your business. How Shiraz got to $1,000,000 in sales. How to match your conscious beliefs with your unconscious beliefs. How to recognize emotional triggers that tell you something inside needs to shift. How to start stopping self-sabotage. Why the biggest things your mind tries to avoid are guilt and shame. How to train your brain to think the thoughts you want and feel the feelings you want. Ways to avoid the withdrawal from your self-sabotage addiction. Once you “get out of the self-sabotage hole” how to maintain your success in just 10-15 minutes a day.

You need to stand out in the sales world to be successful and video is an excellent tool to leverage if you have the right strategies. I discuss how to do that with my guest, Jason Zygadlo. Jason, a seasoned expert with nearly 20 years in medical device sales, now channels his unique skills into Build.Your.Own.Brand., where he helps individuals and organizations stand out creatively and memorably.     Jason has always tried to do things differently to be memorable. He spent his earlier career in medical device sales. Fast forward to 2024, in his business practice, he was still looking for ways to be different and be more efficient. The video world was introduced to him by a friend who also sold medical devices. Jason was very quick to adopt the technology himself because he realized he could be more efficient by sending videos instead of regular emails. He particularly liked the analytical part of video technology. You could know if and when the video was watched and for how long. That allowed him to fine tune his messaging to get longer video views. Getting to Know Him It’s getting harder and harder to see potential clients. So how can you engage with them? If you’re not delivering your message effectively, then what good are you doing? If the information you’re trying to deliver to the potential client isn’t currently getting through, what other ways are out there? Email is the starting point. Almost everyone shares their email address now. You can also send the videos through LinkedIn. Jason realized he could be very efficient and send a lot of videos in a personalized and tailored way and then know when they were opened. When he did end up getting in front of the potential client in person he would often be greeted with “It seems like we’ve already met”. They would know him from the value that he had sent. It was usually a video introduction followed up by some kind of white paper or other material. Getting Your Message Past the Gatekeeper The beauty of videos is how versatile they can be. Jason would stop by an office and leave some information with the gatekeeper. He would then follow up with his potential client by sending a video saying he had left the information with the gatekeeper. Then (in the video) Jason would introduce himself and let the potential client “get to know him”. The next video would be a demo of the product Jason was selling. Once the potential client met with him Jason would send a thank you video. How Many Videos to Send You can’t just knock on the door once or twice, it’s a persistence game. Jason talks about being “pleasantly aggressive”. The videos don’t replace the stop-byes, the drop-offs and the traditional ways of doing things. Videos are a supplemental tool to tack onto the other things that you’re doing to close the sale. There’s no magic number of videos you should send. It takes as long as it takes to get what you’re trying to get and what you’re trying to accomplish. We also dive into topics such as: What the first meeting looks like after you get past the gatekeeper. Why you should create personalized videos and how to do that. The power of curiosity in the world of video and sales. How to be different and memorable. Why different is better for breaking through the noise. Examples of video platforms you can use to stand out. Why you should send thank you videos after the sale is closed. The importance of practicing being on video. The one thing, above all else, that you should do to stand out in the sales world with video. …and other golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”         Click here for more outstanding interviews with entrepreneurs and thought leaders! About My Guest             Jason, a seasoned expert with nearly 20 years in medical device sales,

Contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to break the bank to get great PR. I discuss how to do that in this episode with my guest, Jill Lublin. Jill is a 25+ year Media Magnet.  She is a world-renowned publicity expert, international speaker and 4x Best Selling author. Jill has made thousands of stage appearances alongside celebrities such as Tony Robbins, Barbara Corcoran and Jack Canfield, to name a few.     Jill got into the media like many people find their careers; in a circular and roundabout way. She originally thought the legal field was going to be her career. In college, she started working in the music business in promotion and publicity and fell in love with that. She turned her career around to be the director of promotion and publicity at four independent record labels. She eventually opened her own business in publicity, wrote the book “Guerilla Publicity” and now she speaks all over the world. She also runs media master intensive workshops and helps entrepreneurs get their name out there without having to spend a fortune. Why Entrepreneurs Need Publicity Publicity is happening whether you want it to or not. It starts at the minute you walk out your door, enter a Zoom room or go out for coffee. Your publicity is happening so you should embrace it and make it authentic for yourself. Jill believes that’s really important. One thing she waves her flag about is having a great, focused message. That means being resonant to who you are. Your reputation comes down to publicity so make it count. The message that you have should be attracting clients, referrals, trust in your industry, credibility, visibility, all the other things that publicity does for you. The results lie within being powerful with your own publicity and consistently being in the practice of sharing your message. Why You Must Make Publicity a Conscious Effort This means being conscious about your message. In other words, be clear about who you are. If you’re outgoing and extroverted, embrace it. If you’re shy and introverted, embrace it. Here’s what Jill knows from working with over 100,000 entrepreneurs: When you’re clear about your message, it gives you confidence to share it at networking events and in the media. The confidence that it gives you helps you speak more concisely and precisely. People will be attracted to that because when you’re confident about what you do people will want to work with you. Getting Over the Fear of Elevator Pitches Sometimes it’s fear because you don’t know what to say, sometimes people think their elevator pitch sounds like everybody else’s. When yours is authentic to you and you push the right buttons with your message that is who you are. What’s wonderful about that is that it gives you the ability to say it anywhere, anytime no matter what you’re feeling, and it helps you successfully run your business. We also dive into: Why publicity isn’t a “one and done” situation, it’s an evolutionary process. What you need to do once you have your messaging down. The power of local publicity and how to get it. What “earned media” is and what it gives you. How to approach media outlets to get publicity. The power of “Seven Follow Ups”. Two ways to publicize your publicity. Why you don’t have to spend a fortune to get publicity. How to do Guerilla Publicity. When to think about hiring a publicist. The one thing you need to do above all else to get publicity. …and other golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”         Click here for more outstanding interviews with entrepreneurs and thought leaders! About My Guest             Jill Lublin is a 25+ year Media Magnet.  She is a world-renowned publicity expert, international speaker and 4x Best Selling author. Jill has made thousands of stage appearances alongside celebrities such as Ton...

If you want to achieve peak performance, you can probably benefit from creating a Performance Bubble. I discuss how to do that with my guest, Craig Domann. Craig is a veteran NFL agent who has negotiated more than half a billion dollars’ worth of contracts for more than 300 NFL athletes, coaches and now high school and college athletes for their NIL. His journey as a sports attorney has shown him that having a Pro Mindset is key to a successful pro-athlete career. Craig released a book, Pro Mindset: Be Your Best In Your Biggest Moments, and he has a podcast Pro Mindset Podcast where he discusses with guests on his show, the mental ingredients that are common for elite performers and then he transfers that knowledge in insightful stories and daily applications.     Your Performance Bubble Explained The Performance Bubble is like a secret weapon that the best of the best utilize to create a mental space so that they can be “in the zone”. The Performance Bubble is applicable to all areas of life, whether you’re in business and you have a big-time sales call or if you’re an athlete and you have a big game. What it does is creates this safe zone where you block out all the things that work against you; fear, doubt, what happened the last time, what somebody told you, etc. When you’re in your Performance Bubble those types of things don’t throw you off your game. Everyone has been in those situations where they had their act together, they had their game plan, they show up for whatever they need to show up for and their bubble got burst by some curveball, some unexpected comment, objection, whatever it may have been. The Performance Bubble creates a safe zone, a safe mental space where you can be your best in your biggest moments. What Does a Performance Bubble Do for You? Number one is the awareness that you have one. If you don’t have one you might be awesome for a short time because you’ve prepared for it, you strategized, you might have visualized it, you think you’re all set. Until they throw you that curve ball and then it blows up in your face. Or you have that pocket voice which is talking to you at the same time you’re doing the presentation that says “Hey man, remember the last time that you were in this situation? It didn’t work out so well.” And that negative thought comes in and now you’re operating on that negative thought. The Performance Bubble is boundaries and anchors. The boundaries block out the noise, past failures, and so on. In business, if you’re counting your commission check before the sales meeting is over, most of the time you don’t get the check because you’re so attached to the results and the outcome. When you can embody why you’re there and what you’re doing and let the results take care of themselves, the scoreboard usually tilts in the right direction. Your bank account looks pretty good. And so, the bubble is going back to the boundaries and anchors, it’s blocking out the things that don’t serve you and everything that does serve you gets to come in. Craig always talks about how you step into that bubble on game day, you step into that bubble when you walk into the board room and the only things that come with you are belief in who you are, confidence in what you’re going to do, all the preparation you did, gets to come in. All the practice you did gets to come in. You visualized yourself on the drive to the meeting or the bus ride to the stadium. You visualized it maybe for the whole week. That gets to manifest itself in the Performance Bubble. In this episode we also dive into topics such as: Two ways to lower the volume of the negative voices in your head. How to create a regulator for your mental state. How to turn up the volume for the positive voices in your head. The three parts of the pro mindset. How an entrepreneur can find good council to shorten their learning curve. What to do create a Performance Bubble for success before a networking e...

People love to hear and listen intently to great stories. If you can craft them for your marketing initiatives, you’ll build your business faster. I discuss how to do that in this episode with my guest, Thom Van Dycke.     Thom is a business advisor for solopreneurs and small agencies and a certified StoryBrand Guide. He works to help his clients develop strategic offers that deliver huge value to their customers. Thom was a pastor for 19 years. When you’re in that kind of role there’s a lot of storytelling already involved. In 2020 he left the ministry and started his own business after reading the book “Building a Storybrand” by Donald Miller. In the back of the book the author described how to get certified as a “Storybrand Guide”. Thom realized that the Storybrand framework is very powerful for organizing your thoughts around storytelling. That sparked the idea: “I wonder if it’s time for a switch”. After getting certified Thom launched his business and started out as a copywriter. He fell in love with taking the genre of communication, marketing, and figuring out ways to interweave it with storytelling. Thom has been copywriting for four years and now and is starting to do more storytelling consulting work. When it comes to storytelling and marketing, where do you begin? Many people think storytelling is about telling their story and being autobiographical. While there is a place for that in marketing, that’s not necessarily what it means to tell your story in marketing. Storytelling in marketing really looks at what other parts of a story are and how do we can use them in our marketing strategy. Storytelling begins with a hero who wants something and can’t get it, they have an external problem. Then frustration about that leads to internal problems for them. Then the hero meets a guide. The guide gives them a plan, paints a picture of success and failure, and calls the hero to action. The whole arc of the story is one of transformation. So, the idea is the framework for a story. The reason that is so powerful is that our brains are wired to recognize the patterns of stories. From the beginning of written communication humankind has used stories to make sense of their world. The more ancient you go, the more the stories are more supernatural in nature. The Need for Storytelling In modern times we’re still creating stories to explain the world around us. We are still using stories to make sense of the universe, often in scientific and naturalistic ways. It’s part of our DNA to make sense of the world that way. When Thom starts working with a client, he first makes sure they understand that concept. Then he helps them understand that when it comes to marketing, in order to be effective, you need to be extremely clear. The brain wants to find the shortest path to an understanding or meaning as possible. When we put our marketing and messaging into a story format, we’re helping people’s brains get to the point we’re trying to make faster. It helps us land more deals and close more sales because it cuts out some of the brain’s confusion of trying to get to the point. In this episode we also discuss: How to get to the point quicker in your marketing strategy. The case for making your clients to heroes of your stories instead of yourself. The pitfalls of the least effective marketing campaigns and how to avoid them. How to articulate your hero’s (customer’s) problems effectively and show them how you solve them. The role of and need for compassion in marketing. How to position yourself as the hero’s guide in your customer’s journey. How to arrange the content on your website to create a hero’s journey. The need for a call to action and how to create one. How to balance explaining problems with explaining solutions in your marketing. Two common storytelling mistakes most people make and how to avoid them. The one thing that,

Everyone can be and probably should be a lifelong learner; that practice can change the course of your life. I discuss how and why to do that in this episode with my guest, Eric Pfeiffer. Eric is the founder and CEO of MPWR Coaching. Eric has been in the leadership development space for over 15 years, having helped build a multi-million-dollar coaching business and trained over 150 coaches worldwide.     Eric says becoming a lifelong learner didn’t start early enough in his career. In his twenties and even into his early thirties he felt pressure to know everything, to have arrived, to have achieved, and to have whatever knowledge base he needed to be successful. He constantly ran into roadblocks and to different challenges that kept reflecting to him “You don’t know everything.” There was a long season when every time some inadequacy was exposed in him through some deficiency, usually by other people, he would take that as an insult as somehow diminishing his value, disqualifying him from something better. This eventually changed with help from mentors. One day a mentor said to Eric “You need to get over yourself! You’re going to spend the rest of your life becoming a better version of you. If you see every exposure of something you don’t know or don’t know how to do as some kind of diminishing of your value, you’re going to stay plateaued and stuck. Then what you’ll do is create a world around you where what you know and know how to do currently is the only thing that’s required. That means your success level and trajectory are diminished as well.” Something Changed He says he “flipped that script” and recognized that every time some deficiency in him was exposed he decided to celebrate it. He realized that he could be grateful and appreciative because it’s exposing a potential new growth opportunity. If he can embrace the positive perspective, he sees it as an opportunity instead of being an obstacle. Then what happens is every time something’s exposed as a deficiency he gets to experience another area to grow in. He could go on another journey of personal transformation and development. As that became more and more the norm for his life Eric realized that his trajectory radically changed, and he found himself on this continual growth path. How Does Becoming a Lifelong Learner Begin? At first, it’s a choice, it’s a mindset shift to “flip the script” by realizing we can always choose how we interpret an experience. When we experience an area of life that we’ve fallen short in we’re either going to self-protect and project responsibility on everybody else or decide in that moment to choose to see those circumstances as opportunities for our own personal growth and development. That is the starting point because until we have that mindset, until we can control our mindset about our failures and shortcomings then we will always see those as roadblocks rather than the opportunities that they really are. From there Eric believes that we have to learn some basic mechanisms to squeeze the learning out of our life experiences, whether they be positive or negative. It’s all up to you! We also dive into topics such as: How to flip the script on internal dialogue/shift your mindset. The importance of and how to practice self-awareness. How to shift your mindset from my failure is an obstacle to it’s an opportunity. How developing and adopting small habits leads to big success. How to know what to take in and what to leave out. Words for time: Chronos (sequential/stopwatch/calendar time) and Kairos. How to recognize moments that are most relevant to you and embrace them. What are brains are hardwired to do in our best moments. How to maintain a life of lifelong learning and not just have it be a blip on your radar. The ROI of being a lifelong learner versus just being a momentary learner. How to create a paradigm shift from obstacle to opportunity.

If you’re going to build a business, you should love what you do. Once you build a foundation it’s time to scale the business. I discuss how to do that in this episode with my guest, Mary Kelly.     Mary started working for her dad’s business at trade shows when she was just seven years old. Her parents would leave her at their tradeshow booth to write orders while they worked the room to get more business. Mary took a hiatus from the business world for 25 years when she joined the navy and spent 17 of those years in Asia. During that time, she got experience leading teams that were both multi-cultural and multi-lingual. She learned how to manage people, assets, and supply chains. Transitioning into the Private Sector During her last tour in the Navy, Mary taught at the naval academy. The admiral was always being called to give talks about the status of the Navy, leadership, and other topics to government institutions and private sector businesses. One day the admiral was busy, and Mary’s friend called her and asked her to give a talk. That led to more talks. At one of those talks the organizer asked her to come back and train their people. Mary was ready for the opportunity because the premises of what you’re managing doesn’t really change. It doesn’t matter if it’s Navy people or businesspeople. Managing and leading people is still managing and leading people. This is where people get hung up on “How do we lead Gen Z, or millennials, or boomers if they’re older or younger than us?” Mary believes that regardless of the demographic, people need great leadership. You don’t lead demographics, you lead individuals. Lead your people well and the rest will follow suit. This belief has led to a very successful private sector speaking career for Mary. The Biggest Lessons Learned Number one, you must pay attention to your numbers, always pay attention to your numbers. Number two, realize and embrace that your people are your most important assets. You must make sure that people show up every day to serve you, the mission and the vision you’ve got in mind. The third thing is when you see a disruption there’s almost always more to it than what you think. Dig a little bit deeper than you initially want to, look at the surface problem and go “Ok, we’ve solved that, put a band-aid on it, everything is fine, NO. What Mary found is there’s almost always a deeper-rooted problem that needs a solution. Many leaders are worried about making a mistake or going in the wrong direction, so they do nothing. Sometimes they stagnate or believe a decision they made a year ago is still a good decision today. In that case they’re not taking the current market conditions into consideration. You need to ask yourself what is the situation today and how has it changed since yesterday and how might it change tomorrow. How to Start Building a Business and Do It Effectively First you must figure out your vision and your mission. The next question to answer is why are you better at those than somebody else? You can be competitively better (you’re just better) or you can be comparatively better (and have a lower price point, or you’re more convenient, and so on). This means answering: Competitively and comparatively where are you better? Build your value proposition around that. Then you build out your mission and figure out where you want to go. From there you create the action steps to get you there. When you cross the action steps, this is where Mary believes a lot of people get stuck, you must first say, “What’s going to be the biggest obstacle?” Sometimes, it’s your own friends and family. They’re going to say things like “You can’t start that business.” Those are not the people you don’t want to listen to. Once you see those obstacles then you brainstorm on the solutions. If you don’t give your brain a place to go with the solutions, it’s going to focus on the obstacles. And you’re going to stop and make excuses like “I don’t...

Building a strong brand and powerful online presence are necessities for entrepreneurs. I discuss how to do that in this episode with my guest, Shon Christy. Shon brings over 20 years of marketing expertise as the founder of Shon Christy Social Media, Fractional Social Pro, and NeuroSocial Labs. He's worked with over 800 companies internationally, pioneering innovative social media marketing and engagement approaches.     When Shon got discovered social media he was just a basic user. When social media got to college campuses, he was getting his master’s degree at the University of Akron. He was in the right place at the right time. Shon launched his first social media company. They were the first niche social media marketing agency in the state of Ohio. Talk about a great start! Shon had to build the business “brick by brick” by practicing what he was preaching and trying new things online. In addition to his company he built his own personal brand, establishing himself as the local leader in social media through public speaking and his online activity. Shon was building his online presence and promoting himself. When he looked back after a couple years of doing that, he examined why some things worked and why some things didn’t work. He realized that attention was becoming the new currency. We’re getting bombarded with marketing messages more and more every day. Our minds are filtering and rejecting information all the time. For this reason, it’s even more important for you to stand out. So that’s what Shon started to do. He focused on some principles that he successfully used to grab people’s attention. You don’t automatically have somebody’s attention during your first interaction with them. Shon realized that saying the same things on social media over and over gets boring to your audiences. He shifted his messaging from time to time to stay fresh in his marketing efforts. How to Start Building Your Online Brand Shon started by asking “Who am I?” The answer guided his online branding messages. Social media is the great digital amplifier, and he was amplifying the right messages. Marketing begins with taking an authentic look at yourself. Shon likens your personal brand to a recipe. It’s the concept of a “secret sauce”. Understanding what that taste palette is for you and understanding the ingredients of your personal brand is where it starts. Shon recommends broadcasting multiple things to attract like-minded people. You might try five or six things, and the sixth thing creates a way to connect with somebody on a human level, that will grab attention. That’s part of his alignment concept. If you’re aligned with other people they’re going to like you a little bit more. Getting somebody to like you because of that branding is a key to long term success. We also delve into things such as: How to get people’s attention. How to eliminate roadblocks for people to communicate with you. How to keep people’s attention after you get it. Two ways to know that you have someone’s attention. The importance of amplifying other people's stories while amplifying your own and how to do that. How to build a reputation and not just have a bunch of people’s attention. How to move along the know, like, and trust continuum faster. How to build and balance your personal reputation with your professional reputation. How to build a reputation and a business without being “salesy”. The importance of practicing the Golden Rule in your professional life. How to maintain your reputation over time after you build it. …and more golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”         Click here for more outstanding interviews with entrepreneurs and thought leaders! About the Guest             Shon Christy brings over 20 years of marketing expertise as the founde...

Do you ever run into your Brain Bully? What does that feel like? With the right strategies you can build your self esteem and achieve success in all areas of your life. In this episode I discuss how to do that with my guest, Lynn Smith.     Lynn is a national media expert, consultant, keynote speaker, and host of “StrollerCoaster” a parenting podcast brought to you by Munchkin the world most loved baby brand in the world. Previously, she spent 15 years as an anchor on the TODAY Show, NBC News, MSNBC, and CNN Headline News. In 2021, Smith left TV News to launch her company Rylan Media which takes her media insight and expertise to tackle corporate and individuals greatest branding and communications challenges. Meet Your Brain Bully The brain bully is that voice we all have in our mind that’s saying, “What if I screw this up?” or “Does Mark like what I’m saying?” or “What if the audience thinks I’m a total idiot?” Lynn realized after coaching hundreds of executives, after being a news anchor for 15 years, and having her own Brain Bully incidents many times, that almost 100% of us have a Brain Bully. If you don’t, you’re likely a sociopath or a narcissist. Just saying. Her brain bully creeping in was so common that Lynn decided “I have to create something in order to help myself and other people overcome this situation…”, and through self-examination she did just that. As a news anchor she was told many times (to her face) “You’re not good enough, you’ll never make it in TV”. Then she had her own internal audio loop; “Maybe they’re right, maybe I’m not good at this…” She had to create techniques to overcome her Brain Bully to sustain a long term career in television. Now, when she shares her methodology with executives it’s this lightbulb moment for them. “Oh, I shouldn’t ignore this voice, this voice is actually not real, or right, I just have to tame it, I need to know how to manage my Brain Bully”. How do you overcome your Brain Bully? Initially, early on, when Lynn was in her early twenties and started in television, beating her Brain Bully was the result of  pure grit and tenacity. It was a case of “just keep going”. Sometimes she didn’t have any reason or logic to believe in her eventual success, she just had to push through it. There was no other option. From seeing what good came from pushing through her Brain Bully dialogues she realized “Now I can have fun with this, and I can talk to my Brain Bully. I can say, ‘Brain Bully’, listen here, you’re through right now”. She parented her Brain Bully out of the situation. If you have kids, what would you say to them if they had a bully? What advice would you have to get rid of that bully? That’s what she did. You must literally name it and then tame it. You tame it by having those conversations with it. The next step? Reframe it. That Brain Bully could be an asset to you by keeping you on your toes. We don’t want to get complacent. It’s when we lose control of the dialogue that we have problems. So, you must name it, tame it and reframe it. We do a deeper dive into that methodology and discuss topics such as: What’s really holding you back in life, and it’s not your professional skillset or lack of one. How to find ways to do whatever it is you were meant to do with your life. Why just pushing your Brain Bully away won’t work. How to control your fight, flight, or freeze responses in your primitive brain. It doesn’t know the difference between you giving a presentation and you being attacked by a tiger. It’s protecting you from what you perceive as a threat. How to create a Brain Buddy and use it to your advantage. How and why you have complete control over which thoughts you focus on. How to show up as your authentic self. …and more golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”        

LinkedIn is only a powerful tool if you know how to use it. My guest Donna Serdula and I discuss LinkedIn branding strategies in this episode. Donna has almost 20 years of experience on LinkedIn. She is the founder and president of Vision Board Media, a professional branding company that helps individuals and companies tell their unique stories on LinkedIn and beyond.     Getting Started Donna’s relationship with LinkedIn started in 2005. A colleague of Donna’s asked if she had heard of LinkedIn and said “You should join, you will get a lot of opportunities. Things just drop in your lap; you’ve got to sign up for it!” When she signed up, she saw that her profile looked like a resume. So, she copied and pasted her very dry, dull, out of date resume. She thought “Ok, opportunity, hit me! I can’t wait to see what happens here!”. Then nothing happened. It seemed like a huge waste of time. She continued with her professional life and didn’t think much more of that LinkedIn profile for quite some time. She accepted another job, no thanks to LinkedIn. She found herself in a much more cutthroat sales type of environment. She was dialing for dollars; she was cold calling. Suddenly LinkedIn started to cross her path again. She was using it to enhance her cold calling, she wanted to learn about the people were that she was calling before she spoke with them. One day she had an epiphany; she thought about all these people and every time she looked at their profiles, she was disappointed. She wanted to learn more about their story. Then it hit her, how was she showing up? She Googled herself and her LinkedIn profile was the first thing to pop up. She realized by lack of caring and lack of activity she was doing the same thing all the other people were doing – nothing. That’s when she realized that your LinkedIn profile isn’t your resume. It’s much bigger than that, it’s your online presence, often your first impression, and your brand. A BIG Shift in Thinking and Results… Donna contemplated how she wanted to be perceived and what goals she was striving to achieve. She looked at LinkedIn strategically. She created a new profile that was much more aligned with her desired personal brand. As soon as she did that amazing results started to happen. She became a magnet for opportunities. People were searching for someone like her, and she was popping up in the search results. People were seeing her as someone in their industry that is a thought leader and cares about other people in her industry. That’s when she realized she wanted to help other people do the same thing and get the same branding results. They need help with their resumes, help with their bios, help with strategically using LinkedIn as a networking tool, help with thought leadership assistance and so on. How to Build Your Brand to Get Opportunities to Come to You When it comes to LinkedIn certain things have changed, and certain things haven’t changed. When you think of the LinkedIn feed, that has changed massively. The LinkedIn profile hasn’t really changed, it’s still this huge area to really tell your story, to showcase your career trajectory, and it’s a place to get found. Most people forget that LinkedIn is a search engine. A lot of people think LinkedIn is just a professional social network. Many people on LinkedIn are there looking for someone like you. That’s one place where successful branding strategies begin. What terms do you want to be found for? You need to be peppering those terms throughout your profile, that way you can collide with opportunity. Many times, Donna finds big mistakes that people make are doing what she had been doing. For example, she was looking for opportunities in sales, but she was aligning herself as a job seeker. Her target audience wasn’t recruiters, it was sales managers and other people in her industry. She overhauled her profile, and the right people started to find her because she was align...

Networking needs to begin with the development of a successful mindset long before you get into tactics and strategies. I discuss how to develop that mindset in this episode with my guest, Dr. Ivan Misner. Dr. Ivan Misner is the Founder & Chief Visionary Officer of BNI (Business Network International), the world’s largest business networking organization. Founded in 1985, the organization now has over 11,100 chapters in 76 countries throughout every populated continent of the world. Last year alone, BNI generated 15.2 million referrals resulting in more than $23.4 billion dollars’ worth of business for its members.     When I asked how he learned the mindset for networking, Ivan replied “I have a lot of grey hair, I learned the hard way.” Fortunately, you don’t have to do that with a little guidance! One of the big problems with networking (the right way) is that we don’t teach that in colleges and universities. It’s not taught in schools anywhere in the world. So, what happens from lack of education? People go out and they have the wrong mindset; they use networking as a face-to-face cold calling opportunity. Some people teach to end every networking conversation with: “Here are three copies of my card, maybe you’ll pass them along to your friends”. If you don’t know, like and trust someone why would you do that? Ivan was recently the keynote speaker for an event in London with some 900 people in attendance. He asked the audience, “How many of you are here today to hopefully sell something?” 900 people raised their hands. “How many of you are here today hoping to buy something?” Nobody raised their hand. That’s a problem. V-C-P in Action That’s what Ivan calls the “networking disconnect”. People show up to networking events hoping to sell, but nobody’s there to buy. So why go? You go to work your way through the V-C-P Process. This is the beginning of the mindset. V-C-P stands for visibility, credibility, and profitability. First, you must have visibility. Of course, you want to let people know who you are and what you do. Then you must establish credibility, that’s the one that takes a long time. It doesn't happen overnight. It’s more of a marathon than it is a sprint. You must go into networking situations understanding that. Then the third is profitability. Once people know who you are, what you do, and they know you’re credible, they’re willing to pass you referrals because then you have this relationship with them. What tends to happen is we try to jump over visibility, jump over credibility, and get right to profitability. That’s not how it works. Ivan refers to that as “premature solicitation”. That’s the foundation of the mindset. It’s all about relationships, it’s not about transactions. We discuss how to develop those all-important relationships in this episode. We dive into topics such as: How to bridge the gap faster between visibility, credibility, and profitability without being “salesy”. Why givers gain, it pays to be a giver in the long run. How to make quality, meaningful introductions for your network. How to build credibility. Networking is a contact sport, we discuss how to win at that sport. What to say and do in your 1:1 networking meetings to move along the visibility-credibility-profitability (V-C-P) continuum faster. The best way to get more ongoing, qualified referrals with the GAINS methodology. What “profitability” looks like when it’s done the right way. Why the V-C-P continuum is a referral process, not a sales The (big) difference between a lead and a referral. The case for looking for referral partners at events instead of clients. Why the closing rate from referrals is significantly higher than from advertisements. More reasons why if you build a relationship with someone then you’re more likely to get referrals. Why the chances of a referral leading to closed business is much higher than hunting for your next sale...

Entrepreneurs have unique challenges to address. They need peer groups more than most people. We discuss how to create successful peer group experiences for entrepreneurs in this episode with my guest, Craig James. Craig has been running entrepreneurial peer groups for Vistage for many years (Vistage has over 45,000 members in 35 different countries.). He views it as a calling to help fellow entrepreneurs. When you think about the typical entrepreneur, oftentimes they’re operating in isolation and they’re wearing many different hats. When it comes to making big decisions, they oftentimes don’t have many people to tap into to get purely objective advice. Craig addresses those challenges and more!     The Entrepreneurial Support Challenge When it comes to searching for support they might talk to a friend, they might talk to their attorney or maybe their accountant and so on. The problem with that is those people are being paid a fee and the entrepreneur isn’t necessarily going to get straight answers and certainly won’t be challenged in terms of their thinking. You get a lot of “yes men”, and that doesn’t do anybody any good. The benefit of a peer group as Craig has experienced is you can bring any issue you have, challenge, decision, an idea you want to run by people. You can run those things through a group of unbiased peers from noncompeting businesses in complete confidence and they have no skin in the game. They will tell you your baby is ugly (if that’s the case) but also how to make that baby pretty. In this episode we also cover topics such as: The importance of objective advice and the difference between objective and subjective advice. Two ways to start your own peer group. Characteristics of successful peer groups and their membership. How to create a “safe space” to share personal and professional issues. How to develop a growth-oriented mindset as an entrepreneur. The creation of a successful culture for entrepreneur peer groups. How to grow your peer group faster and get on the fast track to getting your first new members. How to maintain a successful peer group culture over time. …and other golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”         Click here for more outstanding interviews with entrepreneurs and thought leaders! About the Guest             I’ve been a Chair with Vistage Worldwide, the world’s foremost CEO development organization, since 2016. My passion is leading high-performing peer groups whose members outperform their competition, and who develop themselves as better leaders. I’m grateful to be in a field which affords me the opportunity to continually improve my life and the lives of those I am fortunate enough to be working with. Prior to Vistage, I spent a decade in what is today known as the Fintech industry with organizations such as Thomson Financial, Wolters Kluwer, and Zacks Investment Research. I’ve held senior positions in both established enterprises and entrepreneurial ventures, and founded a sales performance improvement business. I was a Contributing Editor to The New York Enterprise Report, which was the leading publication for small business owners in the New York City metropolitan area until its acquisition by SmartCEO in 2014, and subsequent dissolution. From 2003 – 2005, I was an Adjunct Instructor at New York University’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies, and for several years was part of the organizing committee for the annual NYU Conference for Small Business and Entrepreneurship, as well as a breakout session presenter in each of those years. I was also a 5-year member and President of a local Toastmasters club. Connect with me on LinkedIn! https://www.linkedin.com/in/craigrjames/

Have you ever had someone at “Hello”? Someone that understood your branding and service offering and wanted to work with you? I discuss how to do that with my guest, Kevin Perlmutter. Kevin is the Chief Strategist and Founder of Limbic Brand Evolution - a brand strategy and neuromarketing consultancy, and creator of Limbic Sparks Brand Strategy, which taps into emotional insight to strengthen connections between brands and people. Kevin has been working in brand strategy for many years. When he started his career, he was in advertising but quickly realized that he wanted to be in the customer experience part of the business. He learned different ways to bring brand strategy together.     The Gap with Traditional Brand Strategy It wasn’t until he was at his next job working in a studio that creates sound and music for brands and entertainment companies that he got introduced to emotional insight and neuroscience-based thinking. Kevin created a research capability rooted in neuroscience where he learned about the limbic part of our brain and how people make instinctive emotional decisions that guide how they act, feel, and consume products and services as they relate to brands. He was on his way. Traditional brand strategy doesn’t address how to put emotional insight at the center of branding endeavors. Emotional insight is what guides us; it guides what we think and how we behave. Yet it’s often overlooked with most brand strategy campaigns. Kevin decided to create an approach to brand strategy that puts emotional insight at the center of campaigns. How and Why People Make Decisions Based on Emotion There’s a behavioral science truism which is “We buy on emotion and justify with logic”. Our brains are operating all the time at the subconscious level. We are deciding what we choose to think about and what we choose let go, moving on to the next thing that grabs our attention. We are emotional beings at heart and our brains are trained to guide us based on emotional instincts. If you’re interacting with a brand and it has a negative impact on you, that experience is going to be encoded in your memory longer than another generic, unemotional experience. We’re highly attuned to something positive, highly attuned to something negative, or we’re indifferent to the situation. You want your brand to create positive experiences and emotions with your target audience. We discuss how to do that. In this episode we also dive into: How to create instinctive positive responses that Kevin calls “Limbic Sparks” to have your customers at hello and keep them coming back for more. How to tap into peoples’ positive emotions instead of turning them off. The problems and pitfalls with traditional brand strategy and how to avoid them. How to have conversations that allow your brand to be relevant to your target audience. How to create shared emotional motivation. How to create a brand benefit and invitation rooted in what your potential clients are looking for. How to create “Limbic Sparks” and emotional attachment with a new service. How to create a meaningful benefit for potential clients and then a well-crafted invitation to bring them into your world. What type of people to reach out to and what research questions to ask them when you’re launching a new service offering. The fastest way for a brand to fail. How to build and maintain a successful reputation. How to keep people’s attention when you get it and how to stay top of mind. …and more golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”         About the Guest             Kevin Perlmutter, Chief Strategist and Founder of Limbic Brand Evolution - a brand strategy and neuromarketing consultancy, and creator of Limbic Sparks® Brand Strategy, which taps into emotional insight to strengthen conn...

Starting a podcast is no simple task. If you have the right strategies, it can be a fun, fruitful endeavor. I discuss how to do that in this episode with my guest, John Golden.     John is a globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Notes. Around 2020 John and his team were migrating their blog. The question “Does the world need more product blogs?” popped into their heads. They decided to do something different. John suggested they start an online magazine. They wanted to create meaningful and valuable content to educate people about niche business topics. They reached out to people to get them to contribute, but with a twist. John started interviewing them. He thought “Why would we create content from only our point of view when there’s global experts out there with genius to share. So, they started doing that. Their podcast was born. They wanted to bring experts’ expertise to the world and give those people a platform to share their genius with John’s audience. What’s the starting point? The place you need to start is with your “Why?”. Think about things like why are you starting the podcast? If you’re starting a business podcast and you think “I’m going to start this business podcast to generate leads for my business” That’s one way you can go about it. If that’s what you’re going to do, then you need to be very specific about who your target audience is and what will be of value to them. That decides what your interview topics will be. You must do your research and get intelligently targeted with your efforts. Otherwise, you’re going to start your podcast and you’re going to be frustrated because you’re never going to build an audience if your podcast topics aren’t focused on your audience’s needs. One key point? It’s better to have a small audience of the right people than a large audience of the wrong people. That’s when you must sit down at the beginning and answer “Why am I starting this podcast and what is the purpose of it?” Will you be happy with your podcast being very targeted and very niche or do you want to go broader? If you’re going to go broader why and how are you going to get there? Unfortunately, a lot of people just jump in before they’ve answered their “Why?”. That’s the first problem to avoid. We get into more things to avoid and strategies for business podcasting success during our conversation. In this episode we also discuss: How to discover and decide on a target audience. Great advice for new hosts. The importance of getting honest feedback and constructive criticism when you get started. The case for not using “canned questions” that you send to your guests ahead of time. How to embrace and be your authentic self as a host. When a new podcaster can expect to get traction with listeners and viewers. The qualities of successful podcasts needed for faster growth. Guerrilla marketing techniques and strategies to grow your audience base. The power of guesting on other peoples’ podcasts. How to approach podcasters to be a guest on their shows. How to sell yourself as a host. Once you get traction, how to maintain it and grow it for the long haul. …and more golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”         About the Guest             John Golden, a globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP!

Traditional networking doesn’t work anymore. These days it’s all about meaningful relationships. I discuss how to build them in this episode with my guest, Daniel Andrews. Daniel is a native of Columbia, South Carolina where he currently resides after an absence of 13 years. He owns a business that shows businesspeople how to identify, find, meet, and nurture professional relationships with Key Referral Partners. Fundamentally, he shows businesspeople how to STOP “networking,” and START building true networks. This is his fourth career; he’s been successfully self-employed for 36 years (50 if you start with the lemonade stand in first grade).     Networking Origins Originally, Daniel wasn’t good at networking. He decided to work at being good. Some painful lessons, mentoring, reading, doing things right and taking notes and doing things wrong and taking notes eventually led to networking success. He believes that the way we set expectations for other people and confirm our expectations of them is very important. Initially Daniel believed that sales were referral based, but in a very casual way. He thought that getting referrals was networking, and later he discovered that that isn’t the case. The moment that it became clear to him he was in the insurance business doing employee benefit work and got a “referral” that was much more. It was an endorsement. His experience up until then was an introduction was just a hand-off to hopefully get a sale. In direct sales that was enough because he could demonstrate the product that he was selling. Then someone personally vouched for Daniel’s integrity. In that moment he realized that an introduction is not a high-quality referral; an endorsement is a high-quality referral. We build networks because people have credibility with people that we have credibility with. Daniel didn’t need to get introduced to his next client, he had to borrow the credibility he had with a friend. The credibility that his friend had with another person got him where Daniel needed to go. That was the big light bulb moment. His wingman wasn’t there to introduce Daniel, he was there to endorse Daniel. How to Start a Relationship the Right Way Your attitude must be one of mutuality; you need to see who you can serve and who you can be served by. Daniel says this isn’t reciprocity, he doesn’t like that word at all. Reciprocity usually means that people are keeping score. When he meets somebody in a networking situation, Daniel will give what he can to the other person during their interaction, regardless of the time frame. At the same time, he’s evaluating if there’s a reason to have another, longer meeting. As far as what it looks like stylistically and what the actual actions are, Daniel’s always probing for higher value between the two of them. Traditional networking is “speed prospecting”; people take a one-dimensional model: They meet someone, try to figure out if the other person is a prospect, yes/no/maybe, get a business card and move on. Nobody likes being treated like a prospect until they’ve identified themselves as a prospect and want to buy. There’s a better way to build business relationships and we’ll look at that. In this episode we also discuss: How to get out of “speed prospecting” mode. The best thing you can talk about when you’re meeting someone for the first time. How to gain trust with potential prospects. How to know which relationships to build and maintain, and which ones to let go. How to bridge that gap between serving and traditional selling. How to foster a referral relationship when there’s not an immediate referral to be given. Why not keeping score in business relationships is a good thing. …and more golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”         About the Guest            

Becoming a great podcast guest is a blend of art and science that you can master with the right strategies. My guest Noémi Beres and I discuss some of those strategies. Noémi is the Co-Owner of the Podcast Connections podcast booking agency. She helps entrepreneurs and business owners enrich their lives through connections, sharing their knowledge, and connecting them to quality podcast shows.     Getting into podcasting was a happy accident for Noémi. She became an entrepreneur in 2007 in the social media marketing and online business travel spaces with her husband. Then the pandemic abruptly halted all travel plans in 2020. Fortunately, they had a mentor that advised them to start a business in the podcasting world because it was booming back in 2020. Noémi hadn’t even listened to podcasts before then. That advice provided them with the pivot that would change the course of their business lives. Preparing to be a Great Podcast Guest First, you must do some self-reflection and figure out what your niche for guesting is. That’s the most important step. Ask yourself “What is my business is about and what stories do I want to share?” You also ask, “Who’s attention am I trying to get, who is my ideal listener?” Then, explore different podcasting platforms and find podcasts that align with your message and your target markets. Once you find a few podcasts, create a document with all their contact information. That gives you a “hit list” of industry specific podcasts which means you have the beginning of a marketing plan to kickstart your podcast guesting journey. Outreach Strategies for Potential Podcast Guests After you define your podcast target markets it’s time to start your outreach. Each podcaster has their preferred method of reaching them. Some podcasts have a submission form, which is the easiest option. The other way is to find their email address and craft a pitch. Your pitch must stand out because podcasts hosts get a ton of emails. Noémi suggests you listen to a couple of your target’s podcast episodes and tell the host, specifically, what you liked most about the episodes. This lets them know you took the time to “get to know their show”. You could also leave a five-star review for them on a podcast platform and let them know that you did. Once you get a podcaster’s attention the fun begins! In this episode we discuss: What great guests do differently than average or bad guests. How to prepare for your interviews beforehand. The best way to answer questions during your interviews. Common mistakes that many podcast guests make and how to avoid them. What to do immediately before your interviews. What podcast hosts can do to help their guests be great guests. The case for not sending “canned questions" to the podcast hosts. How long you can expect it to take to become a great podcast guest. What great podcast guests do after the interview. …and other golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”         About the Guest             Noémi Beres helps entrepreneurs and business owners enrich their lives through connections, sharing their knowledge, and connecting them to quality podcast shows. In addition, Noemi is dedicated to helping experts grow their businesses with interviews. Noémi started working in online marketing in 2007. She has a Master’s Degree in Danish Literature and Language; she is a linguist, content creator, and “master organizer.” She loves making hand-sewn collages on canvas in her free time and playing on her hang and frame drum. She is also a walker. Connect with Noémi! Website: https://www.podcastconnections.co/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/noemiberes/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/noemi_beres_/ Click here for more outstanding interviews with entrepreneurs and thought le...

Before you can lead others, you must learn how to lead yourself. I discuss how to do that in this episode with my guest, Kathy Motlagh. Kathy is the CEO and Founder of ThinkVirtues, is a visionary in a true sense. With a profound commitment to harnessing human potential, Kathy delves deep into the complexities of human behavior, unlocking the latent power within everyone she guides.     It was Kathy’s own journey to her own authentic power that really led her to learn the importance of self-leadership. Along the way she’s been fortunate enough to be coached by some of the world’s best coaches and now is a successful coach. Kathy noticed with all the people she’s served, helped and worked with is that the common ingredient with entrepreneurs that grow phenomenal businesses is they have a beautiful leadership quality not only for their teams but for themselves. When it comes to entrepreneurship self-leadership is extremely important. The reason that a lot of businesses fail is not because it’s a bad idea or it’s a bad business model, it’s the entrepreneur’s lack of self-leadership. That’s why it’s important for all entrepreneurs to understand that leadership is one of the most important components of running a successful business whether you’re leading a team or just yourself. What drives us, what gives us that incentive to get out of bed and execute? That’s an important topic to understand. We need to understand who we are authentically, what’s deep within us. It’s not dictated by exterior forces or how we grew up. Those have influence over us in who we think we are. When we tap into our authentic self, which is really taking the time to understand our past and what impact our past still has on us today. Many people never take the time to understand their past to release and let go of the negative aspects of their past. We delve into that and more. In this episode we discuss topics such as: How to work through your past after you discover the negative aspects of it. What you need to do once you let go of the past. The four-pillar approach to creating successful self-leadership. The importance of emotional management in leadership. The other things that hold you back from your true authentic self. The definition of self-leadership. How to connect to your authentic self. How to raise your level of consciousness. How to maintain a higher level of consciousness once you achieve it. …and more golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”         About the Guest             Kathy Motlagh is an esteemed transformational coach and strategic advisor, renowned for her deep impact on top CEOs and leaders worldwide. As the visionary creator of the "Power of Authenticity" workshop, Kathy has pioneered a proprietary framework that revolutionizes personal and professional development. This transformative approach has proven life-changing for many, enhancing leadership and fostering profound growth. Under Kathy’s leadership, ThinkVirtues has evolved beyond a mere platform; it has become a crucible for profound transformation. Her training under the legendary John Maxwell has not only shaped her into a paragon of leadership excellence but has also empowered her to craft initiatives that penetrate the core of our being. The "Power of Authenticity" program, Kathy’s brainchild, represents a paradigm shift, unlocking dormant powers within each individual and promoting a culture of authenticity and effective leadership. Click here to connect with Kathy on LinkedIn Click here to learn more about ThinkVirtues Click here for more outstanding interviews with entrepreneurs and thought leaders!  

Entrepreneurs can be their own media company if they have the right strategies. I discuss how to do that in this episode with my guest, Gresham “Gresh” W. Harkless Jr. Gresh is the founder of Blue16 Media and CBNation. Blue16 Media uses media & technology to change lives. These media properties include Blue16 Marketing-a digital marketing agency providing digital marketing services including web design, website support & SEO services.     When Gresh was younger we didn’t have the tools that we have today that can connect us to the rest of the world instantaneously. As a child he would write a newsletter about things that were going on in his family and they would send care packages to his dad (who was in the military) every month. In those care packages were Gresh’s newsletters. He also sold subscriptions to people close to the family. Fast forward to adulthood; Gresh founded a digital marketing company. A lot of their philosophy is around building things to help solve problems just like he was when he was his 10-year-old self. Discovering Who You Are Gresh believes that a lot of time there’s a lot of noise in our lives, and that happens at different times and different stages. Usually, when you’re a kid, you have a little more leeway to do whatever you’re interested in. Many people don’t have expectations that they have to be a doctor or lawyer, or you should be doing this, or you should be doing that. If you look back at seeds that were planted when you were a kid, you will discover what really lights you up and what you really want to be in the world. That’s what happened with Gresh. Media Strategy Questions There are three questions you need to ask and answer to start a successful media strategy. Who are the people that you’re trying to target? You need to paint a picture from an avatar perspective. You want to understand their problems so you can provide solutions to their problems. What resources will you need? These are most often money and time; you need to know where to get them. What does success look like for you? A clear definition of success will help you get there quicker. In this episode we also discuss: Gresh’s definition of media. Why it’s important to have a clear target market and how to define one. The correlation between target markets and the resources you’ll need to reach them. How to compile the right ingredients for a successful media strategy. How to create and execute your next media strategy. How to start a podcast that best suits your “zone of genius”. Why your definition of success will change over time and how to keep up with the changes. Why answering “Why” should connect you to a greater purpose. …and other golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”         About the Guest             Gresham “Gresh” W. Harkless Jr. is the founder of Blue16 Media and CBNation. Blue16 Media uses media & technology to change lives. These media properties include Blue16 Marketing-a digital marketing agency providing digital marketing services including web design, website support & SEO services. CBNation consists of media properties (blogs, podcasts and videos) helping the business community succeed. Central to Blue16’s marketing philosophy is that You Are a Media Company and that every organization is in the media business and can strategically leverage marketing tools, platforms, and “ingredients” to reach their goals. Click here for more outstanding interviews with entrepreneurs and thought leaders!

I’m excited to have the King of Sales, Jeffrey Gitomer, as my guest again for part two of this interview. We’re discussing some of his golden nuggets of sales advice from 20+ years of experience. Jeffrey’s books have appeared on major bestseller lists more than 500 times and have sold millions of copies Worldwide. Jeffrey has also delivered over 2,500 speeches worldwide. He was awarded the designation of Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) by the National Speakers Association. The CSP award has been given fewer than 500 times in the past 25 years and is the association's highest earned designation.     Successful Sales Presentations When it comes to sales presentations you need to approach them the right way. Jeffrey makes the clear distinction that you need to come in with an idea, not a pitch, especially if you’re selling a service. When it comes time to have the sales conversation, he shares how to eliminate your competition. You need to say something like: “Mr. Jones, the last time you hired a consultant, tell me about the ideas they brought in. Tell me about the things that sparked you to hire them” and listen closely to the response. Continue with: “I have a couple of ideas today that I’ve brought with me. All I’m asking is if you like them, you run with them, fair enough?” That could be enough to close the sale. Let’s use training for another example. Usually, it’s a guy in a classroom setting, pontificating about a few ideas that he thinks you need to be aware of. But Jeffrey’s approach and conversation is entirely different. He tells his prospect “If you want your people trained, we’re going to call your top ten customers and set something up. We’re going to hire three new people and have them work one day at each of the top ten customers for free. At the end of two weeks, you’re going to know why the customer bought, how they use what you sell, and some ideas about what you can take to another customer because you’re going to know why the previous customers bought from you.” He then continues with: “Your salespeople are going to walk into the next prospects’ offices and say, ‘Would you like to know why the last ten people bought from us?’ and they’re going to make the sale because of their unique approach.” That’s sales strategy gold right there! In this episode we continue our discussion about topics such as: What’s wrong with most marketing campaigns and how to fix those problems. The difference between outcomes and results and why outcomes are better to present. Some critical questions you need to ask decision makers to get them to buy your services. The two things that make a “good idea” to present to potential clients. What are you doing together with people that you can relate to so that you can have experiences to share? How to eliminate your sales slide deck and replace it with shared experiences and shared values. Why traditional “discovery calls” are a waste of your time and your prospect’s time. What first time calls should look like and who they should be with. Why picking up the phone and calling a prospect for the first-time trumps email and social media. How to understand why people buy instead of trying traditional sales tactics. Why finding shared values is better than getting “rapport”. How to be perceived as a person of value, not just another salesperson. The line you should open with during first time meetings. …and other golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”         About the Guest             Jeffrey Gitomer is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Sales Bible, The Little Red Book of Selling, The Little Black Book of connections, and The Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude. Jeffrey’s books have appeared on major bestseller lists more than 500 times and have sold millions of c...

I’m excited to have the King of Sales, Jeffrey Gitomer, as my guest for my 100th episode. We’re discussing some of his golden nuggets of sales advice from his 20+ years of experience. Jeffrey’s books have appeared on major bestseller lists more than 500 times and have sold millions of copies Worldwide. Jeffrey has also delivered over 2,500 speeches worldwide. He was awarded the designation of Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) by the National Speakers Association. The CSP award has been given fewer than 500 times in the past 25 years and is the association's highest earned designation.     It's Not about "Pain Points" First, we dive into a common fallacy: Sales is about finding your potential clients’ pain points. When it comes to finding pain points, Jeffrey says his response is “It’s none of your business.” His pain is none of your business. If your prospect tells you their pain, it’s because they’re volunteering it. If you ask them for their pain, it’s none of your business. In sales, people say, “It’s all about the pain points” and Jeffrey says they’re all wrong. Jeffrey does just the opposite, he’s going to start with the pleasure. He’d rather find out where they went to college, where they went on their last vacation and so on. Jeffrey wants to discover things that he may have in common with them because he doesn’t have their pain in common. He’s going to go beyond pain and then he’s going to go beyond pleasure and find shared values. It's all about Shared Values If you can find those shared values, you can create a deeper, more meaningful relationship with your prospect. It’s about finding a shared value, not starting with a shared value. You don’t know what the shared value is until you start to talk about it; but you’re not going to discover it if you’re trying to find out what’s wrong with the person you’re talking to. You need to ask better questions. In this episode Jeffrey shares how to do that and we also discuss: Why salespeople need to understand where they get their opinions from. What makes a good (and bad) sales manager. Why you need to understand that sales isn’t about selling and what it’s really Why “normal conversation” wins over “sales conversation” every time. How to start a sales conversation with humor to drive the conversation forward. How to present yourself as a relatable person to close the deal. How to know when to stop selling and start closing. The best question to ask a decision maker as soon as you walk in the door. More questions to ask to close the deal faster. Nuggets of wisdom such as “sales are not made by telling, they’re made by asking” …and other golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”         About the Guest             Jeffrey Gitomer is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Sales Bible, The Little Red Book of Selling, The Little Black Book of connections, and The Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude. Jeffrey's books have appeared on major bestseller lists more than 500 times and have sold millions of copies Worldwide. Jeffrey gives public and customized corporate seminars, runs annual sales meetings, and conducts live and virtual training programs on selling, YES! Attitude, trust, customer service and customer loyalty, and personal development. Jeffrey has delivered over 2,500 personalized and customized speeches worldwide. His "Insiders Club" and "Sales Mastery Program" have become the go-to place for sales content, coaching and community. They contain Jeffrey's practical sales information, strategies, and ideas that start with a skills-based assessment and real-world lessons. Ongoing sales motivation and reinforcement to help salespeople learn more to earn more. In August 2008, Jeffrey was inducted into the National Speakers Association's Speaker Hall of Fame.

If you want to accelerate the growth of your business, storytelling is one of the best ways to do it. That’s what I discuss in this episode with my guest, John Hetherington. John is an entrepreneur and international speaker teaching entrepreneurs how to leverage storytelling to grow their business.     After John graduated with a degree in electrical engineering his career started in financial services. He believed that you get further by working harder. Work long hours, be first at the desk and last to leave. That’s what he did and he watched people getting promoted over him time and time again. What he realized is that you share your value through stories. That realization lead him to start his own business. It became teaching people that success is all about how you convey your story, share your message and put your value across. John studied a lot of movies that demonstrated the classic “hero’s journey”. What he found is that doesn’t always translate into the business world. John created frameworks which break down how to tell stories and get your message across. It Starts with You Before you share stories with other people it starts with the story that you tell yourself. If the story in your head is I can only achieve this, I can only achieve a certain level of revenue, ultimately you’re limiting your behaviors and your potential. The technology sector was all about finding problems and fixing them. When John started his business, he realized that to succeed you also have to focus on opportunities and share your grander vision. The story really starts with what you tell yourself every day, every morning. The Four “P’s” to Create a Powerful Start to Your Day It starts with a daily productivity plan by setting yourself up for success. Before you start with email, before you start with meetings, sit down and write out what you want to achieve for the day. If you’re starting your day off the right way the rest of your day tends to flow better. When you immediately dive into emails and receive a bad email, that sets the tone for the day. You need to prevent that from happening. You start by connecting with your purpose, then the project(s) you’re going to focus on, then the people who do you need to reach out to, and finally your priorities, or your to-do list. From there you set aside time on your calendar for those four “P’s” and you’re off to a great start. We also discuss: How to create an “insight sandwich” to get your message across in presentations. How to create successful growth projects. How to craft your story to appeal to different types of people. The importance of having and sharing a clear vision. Why you need to tell stories instead of just sharing data. What makes a good “hook” to get your audiences’ attention. The first thing you need to do after you get your audiences' attention. The components of a great story. …and other golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”         About the Guest             John Hetherington is a Technology Strategist, International Speaker and founder of We Deliver Your Vision. He is an expert in using to Technology to scale business and grow revenue and he helps Entrepreneurs use Storytelling to accelerate business growth. John has 10 years strategic consulting experience with Deloitte and Ernst & Young and 25 years delivering technology projects in UK and Canada. He lives in Calgary but travels around the world for his clients and speaking. Connect with John on LinkedIn Learn more about John's company, "We Deliver Your Business" Click here for more outstanding interviews with entrepreneurs and thought leaders!

If you want to create a online marketing strategy, you need to successfully combine strategies with tactics. I discuss how to do that with my guest, Erin Marcus. Erin is the founder and CEO of Conquer Your Business, an international company helping driven entrepreneurs and small business owners get the financial and emotional freedom they need to build a business and a life they're proud of.     First Things First One of the important things to understand as an entrepreneur is your business will never outgrow you. The idea of the inner work never being done is just important to accept. Erin works at the intersection of where what you need to do meets who you need to be to do it. When working on your marketing plans and business plans you need to rearrange what you’re doing to uncover new opportunities. The truth of the matter is that the plan doesn’t matter if you can’t take action based on the plan. If you can’t do the things that it would take to get things done, then those are the wrong things, and they need to change. As Erin works with her clients who are experiencing amazing growth in their business, and what she sees happen time and time again is instead of looking for what you need to do, and we’re talking about marketing tactics here, you really need to ask yourself “Why that particular tactic?”. Tactics are almost the last things you figure out. It’s strategy first, tactics later every time. Success Lies with Your Strategies Many entrepreneurs try to solve business issues with marketing tactics and every business issue needs marketing tactics as part of their strategy. You need to know what you want first. For example, “I want to grow my business” means getting more clients. Then the question becomes “How do I get those clients?" I’ll try XYZ marketing tactic. She calls them one-size-fits-all-soon-to-be-obsolete-insta-tactics. If you ask yourself “Why this tactic?” None of those tactics are wrong or bad, they’re all fantastic; as long as they’re the right ones for you. By answering “Why this tactic?” and aligning them with a strategy, you can decide which ones to engage and which ones to leave behind. That’s where you start. In this episode we also discuss: How your “inner work” helps you decide which strategies and tactics to adopt. Why the “inner work" is making your decisions from a place of abundance, expansion, and growth. The structure of making good marketing decisions. How not to become susceptible to every “guru’s” marketing advice. How to come from a place of inspiration instead of desperation. How to find and ask the “right why”. How to learn about and notice your own “buzzy roller coaster” feelings. How to pick the right marketing strategies and tactics and say no to the rest. Why your business must have a strong online presence and how to create one. How to choose which online platforms to build your business on. …and more golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”         About the Guest             Erin Marcus is the founder and CEO of Conquer Your Business, an international company helping driven entrepreneurs and small business owners get the financial and emotional freedom they need to build a business and a life they're proud of. Having made the successful leap from corporate executive to entrepreneur, Erin uses that experience, along with her MBA education and street smart upbringing, to help her clients reach heights they never dreamed possible. And have fun doing it! Get to know Erin! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLFD-aM6LmA10FQrFC_QchQ https://conqueryourbusiness.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/erinmarcusconqueryourbusiness/

Creating a stronger, more profitable online presence takes skill. We discuss how to do that in this episode with my guest Michael Buzinski. Michael is a decorated US Air Force veteran, he has built several small businesses (two multi-million dollar ventures) and marketed for over 1200 companies, best-selling author, and host of the top 1% podcast “the Buzzworthy Marketing Show”.     Reluctance to be in the food industry as a teenager pushed Michael into sales and, eventually, marketing. Many people start in sales to get into marketing because that’s where you can start without any experience. If you have the gift of gab, you can pretty much sell anything, especially if you have empathy and you can be taught. Michael was a very teachable person at a young age. As he got higher into the sales world, he ended up moving into marketing. Michael loves marketing because it is a continual learning adventure. After his tour in the Air Force Michael became a small business owner. Because of this, he has a huge respect for small business owners and entrepreneurs because he knows how hard it is to get started and there’s nothing out there helping us. Small business owners are on their own. They never say no, they never give up, they fight for what they believe in and those are the people that he likes to be around. The Biggest Marketing Mistake that Entrepreneurs Make Online The biggest thing, especially now with AI, is that people overcomplicate things. Everybody is looking for the next big thing in marketing, so they end up with a lot of random tactics. Michael believes that “Sound strategy aways beats blind tactics”. When Michael started his marketing firm back in 2005, what we have today with social media tools for marketing was nonexistent. Now we have all these shiny things. Unfortunately, people don’t have a good strategy and so marketers and agencies for years have overcomplicated the process. It comes from the enterprise level of looking at marketing where there’s so many moving parts. At that level there are too many complexities in tracking Key performance Indicators (KPIs) for marketing initiatives. Small business owners don’t need all those KPIs. They can get more traffic and even double their traffic and profits with the right strategies. All the traffic in the world means nothing if it doesn't convert. We discuss how to do that. We cover topics such as: Where a sound marketing strategy begins and how to get started. How to define a clear target market. What you should be tracking online to learn what’s working and what’s not working. What vanity metrics are and why they’re misleading. The three KPIs that have the most impact on your business and marketing initiatives. How to double your revenue using three key strategies. How to know what marketing tactics to stop How to recognize your target market’s buying cycle and map out your clients’ value journey. …and other golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”         About the Guest             Michael Buzinski is a decorated US Air Force veteran, serial entrepreneur, digital marketing thought leader, international speaker, best-selling author, and host of the top 1% podcast the Buzzworthy Marketing Show. He has built several small businesses (two multi-million dollar ventures), and marketed for over 1200 companies. Dubbed a “marketing visionary” by the American Marketing Association, Michael is on a mission to eradicate entrepreneurial poverty by simplifying the digital marketing strategy process with the Rule of 26. His revolutionary approach helps business owners avoid the time drain and frustration of managing profitable digital marketing campaigns. Connect with Michael! LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelbuzinski/ Rule of 26 (book): https://www.rulof26.com

There’s a LOT more to improv than entertaining shows. It has many implications to create networking and communication experiences in the business world. That’s what I discuss in this episode with my guest, Mike Weaver. Mike’s been an actor in improv theater since 2003 and a member of the Applied Improvisation Network since 2007.  He leverages his coaching certifications, membership in the Applied Improvisation Network, and over 20 years of pastoral leadership to powerfully serve his clients.     A couple decades ago Mike out getting ice cream with his son and saw a flier on the wall for an improv workshop for professionals. It promised to improve your public speaking skills, enhance communication skills, make you a better leader, and so on. Mike thought “That all applies to me, I don’t know about improv, I think I’ll take a class.” It was in a studio below some theaters in Columbus, Ohio, taught by an actress from New York City. After that first improv class Mike was hooked. He realized at that moment he had been “doing improv” all his life, but he didn’t have a name for it until then. Improv gave Mike permission now to be himself, co-create experiences, have fun, and make something meaningful in a creative way with other people that are all in the process together. Immediately after his first class he signed up for the second level class and from there kept taking classes. To this day he still takes classes because there’s always something to learn. What You Might Not Know about Improv A lot of times people immediately associate comedy with improv. While improv can be funny, it doesn’t have to be. Mike’s seen comedy improv, dramatic improv, and everything in between. It’s all about having an honest conversation in the moment and that honesty is what got him. The biggest misconception is that improv is just about being funny, or its about standup comedy and being clever on stage and that’s not it at all. Another misconception is people thinking “I can’t take improv because I’m not in theater, or I haven’t taken acting classes, etc.” That’s not it. It’s about showing up and being present. That’s a human skill, it’s not necessarily a skill that professionals have. What happens is you start sharpening that skill as you learn.  Everyone can have those skills to listen, be present, to focus, and more. We also discuss: Everyday human skills you can learn through improv. How improv teaches you to be present and live in the moment. How improv can teach entrepreneurs listening skills for client meetings. The difference between traditional improv and applied improv for business. What improv can teach you about creating successful collaborative experiences. How to use improv in everyday conversations. How improv applies to networking in the business world. The power of responding to people instead of reacting to them. …and more golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”         About the Guest             Mike Weaver is the author of "Unstuck: Amazing Momentum for Christian Leaders through Improv" and has been a certified coach since 2015, specializing in empowering leaders to maximize their potential, amplify their influence, and leave a lasting legacy. He’s been an actor in improv theater since 2003 and a member of the Applied Improvisation Network since 2007. He leverages his coaching certifications, membership in the Applied Improvisation Network, and over 20 years of pastoral leadership to powerfully serve his clients. Learn more about Mike! www.unstuckcoaching.co Want to learn more about improv in the business world? Check out "How to Use Improv to Improve Business Communications with Bill Prinzivalli"

Overcoming adversity and creating peak performance states often go hand in hand. That’s what I discuss in this episode with my guest, Jennifer Watson. Jennifer, founder of Watson Worldwide, overcame years of debilitating depression to become an integrative physical therapist, entrepreneur of 6+ figure businesses, a TEDx speaker and now an international speaker & coach.     Jennifer has been a high performer for most of her life. She went to the University of Wisconsin, Madison on a full ride scholarship for track and field and became a two-time All American in middle distance. That became the beginning of her journey in being a high performer as an adult. She had achieved the traditional form of high performance. Unfortunately, what this often looked like was burn yourself to the ground, push through the emotions, push through the pain physically, mentally, and emotionally. Rinse and repeat. That worked for a while and what happened when she went into other areas of her life as a high performer, she started breaking down mentally, emotionally, and physically in the personal and business world. She stepped back and asked, “Is there a way to sustainably high perform during growth and adversity and get more acceleration in her performance by doing it a different way?” The answer was absolutely “Yes!”. That led to her career as a successful entrepreneur and coach to other high performers. Climbing Out of the Hole and Repairing the Breakdown At first, the more Jennifer pushed the more she felt anxiety and depression. She often felt alone, mental health was more taboo then than it is now. Now there are more resources available to you. She picked herself up by the bootstraps, did her research and stepped out and spoke with people about it. She found modalities to help people accelerate getting out of the proverbial hole and, before she started to sink again, she remedied the problem, so it didn’t become a big problem. That lead her to new strategies that she now teaches to other high performers. In this episode we discuss: How to first pick yourself up by the mental health bootstraps. How to combine traditional and wholistic approaches to mental and physical health. The art and science of “neuro-rewiring” and how to apply it in your life. How to grow during times of adversity. How to shift from just “feeling good” to a mental and physical state of peak performance. How to change your relationship with yourself by changing how you talk about yourself. How to stay higher and longer in a peak performance state. Why doing less on stressful days can lead to a healthier environment. How to create a calm state of mind that leads to higher productivity. …and other golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”         About the Guest             Jennifer Watson, MPT, I.M.T.,C., speaker, healer, and visionary on a mission to help leaders heal and accelerate their deeper purpose of impact through shifting their mental-emotional state and optimizing healthy high-performance leadership. As a former D1 athlete and 2x All-American, Jennifer, founder of Watson Worldwide, overcame years of debilitating depression to become an integrative physical therapist, entrepreneur of 6+ figure businesses, a TEDx speaker and now an international speaker & coach. Jennifer’s ultimate goal in life is to be known for the healing she gave, the love she showed and the hope she gave to all that they can truly live their highest potential life. In her spare time, she loves to dance, run, play tennis, read and hang-out with her amazing friends and beautiful nieces and nephews. Jennifer's Social Media Links: https://www.instagram.com/thejenniferwatson https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifer-watson-6b08b9121 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmyNWqvZHr0B1Gxe8t5PW0g

Even small businesses can become trusted brands with the right strategies. I discuss how to do that in this episode with my guest, Bryan Kramer. Called the “Zen Master to Digital Marketers” by Forbes, Bryan is a renowned business strategist, global keynote speaker, executive trainer and coach, investor, two-time bestselling author including a TOP 150 USA best-selling book, and Forbes contributor.     Bryan came up with the topic of the brand connection to business owners because every level of branding (including the US government, go figure) is at the lowest level it’s ever been. Bryan saw an opportunity to reshape what trust means to us. Why Trust is at an All Time Low and What Can Be Done About it The idea around Bryan’s research about why trust is really low stems from the fact that, today, we have so many options. We’re the “fickle customer era”. We don’t have to go to the product anymore, the product comes to us. If you’re a service provider that makes a mistake or takes trust for granted, it’s easy for us to highlight that so much more with social media. When someone has a bad experience and they go to social media, it makes us as viewers to think “I had a similar experience. Maybe I should think about switching services.” The brand loyalty that we once knew has dissipated. Social media is a magnifying glass on the fickle customer. Brand relationships now go beyond the traditional “raving fan” because of accessibility. We want deeper relationships with brands these days, almost like a best friend. When we have that best friend relationship that’s when we’re going to be brand loyal. In this episode we also discuss: The starting point for even smaller entrepreneurs to become trusted brands. The three pillars that all trusted brands share. Why simplicity rules when building your brand. How to bake the “best friend effect” into your brand experience. Mistakes entrepreneurs make while building their brands and how to avoid them. Strategies entrepreneurs can leverage to pass the “Trust Barometer Test”. Why there is no way to fake trust into your marketing. …and other golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”         About the Guest               Called the “Zen Master to Digital Marketers” by Forbes, Bryan Kramer is a renowned business strategist, global keynote speaker, executive trainer and coach, investor, two-time bestselling author including a TOP 150 USA best-selling book, and Forbes contributor. Bryan also created a global movement and is known for his keynotes, book, and talks on “There Is No BtoB or B2C: It’s Human-to-Human, H2H. He is the CEO of H2H Companies, an executive coaching company, and co-owner of PureMatter, a Silicon Valley marketing agency founded in 2001, which earned a spot as one of the “Fastest Growing Companies” three years in a row by the Silicon Valley Business Journal. Learn more about Bryan here

Public speaking is a great way to grow your business if you have the right strategies. That’s what I discuss in this episode with my guest, Mike Domitrz. Mike is a Hall of Fame Speaker, author and Founder of the Center for Respect and conducts keynotes and workshops for tens of thousands of people each year. Now through his unique weekend retreats for leaders, CEOs, and entrepreneurs, Mike is helping passionate trailblazers become more impactful speakers.     Mike believes that what you were taught in public schools about speaking is the worst advice to follow. You learn things like, “Tell them what you want them to do, then tell them which way to do it”. It’s so robotic, audiences do not connect to that. Mike believes you must authentically connect with your audiences. How to Engage with Your Audience the Right Way Start with a question. Most speakers start with a story. By asking a question and letting the audience answer it, you can set the stage for your whole speech. You’ll know what they want to talk about. The people in your audience have a struggle. They’ve been using a belief system that has led them continually back to the same struggle and they have falsely believed their old system will get them past that struggle. You must break them from those beliefs and help them realize those are false myths. When you have a conversation that starts with a question your audience is making a discovery instead of you proving something to them. When you’re a speaker trying to be the smartest person in the room, nobody likes that. When you are simply helping them realize something themselves, and they’re the brilliant ones, your message hits home with them and they remember it. In this episode we also discuss: How to align your mission with your speech before getting in front of an audience. How to share your mission without coming across as “salesy”. How to craft a mission that is worthy of being shared. How to define and find your target audience(s). The components of a successful speech. Ways to get speaking engagements as an unknown speaker. As an entrepreneur, how to build a speaking career that builds your business. Common mistakes that speakers make and how to avoid them. …and other golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”         About the Guest             Decades before mainstream America was discussing "Asking First" or sexual harassment cases were on the cover of every major media publication, Domitrz was being brought in by leading educational institutions and the U.S. military to help them pursue a new standard of consent and respect. With Mike being the author of 3 books and an award-winning DVD, he is considered one of the leading influencers and thought-leaders on the topic of Respect. You may have seen Mike on NBC Dateline as a featured subject matter expert or being quoted in international news publications such as Forbes and The Wall Street Journal. He is continuously being sought out for his proven track record of helping shift the paradigm for people. In 2003, Mike founded what is now The Center for Respect which conducts keynotes and workshops for tens of thousands each year. Mike's extensive experience enables him to connect with audiences of all ages in honest, unique conversations that are always built on creating positive behavioral change for each individual and the organization as a whole. Imagine teaching 15-year-olds about “Asking First” and then later that same day talking with CEOs about creating mutually amazing relationships in the workplace. And now in his unique weekend retreats for leaders, CEOs, and entrepreneurs, Mike is helping passionate trailblazers to be more impactful speakers. Link to Website: www.CenterForRespect.com Links to Social Media: www.Instagram.com/MikeRespects www.

It takes a lot more than a traditional business plan to design a business. It involves surrounding yourself with the right people, community building, marketing outreach and more. It’s possible to do it with the right strategies. That’s what I discuss in this episode with Colleen Biggs. Colleen is a 22-year Business Strategist who empowers Business Leaders to expand their influence through Peak Performance Habits to attract the right clients and drive more profits.  She has launched over 340 businesses, is a Keynote Speaker, Author to 7 #1 International Best-Sellers. Colleen grew up in a very chaotic, unstable household. She believes that when you feel like that as a child you take control of the things you can control. From the time she was a child she felt that she really needed to create that stability for herself because she craved it. Her mom said you grow up, you get a job, you have babies and you’re a homemaker like her mom was. Colleen decided she needed to design a life that looks different than that. She’s been designing her life from that point forward and become a victor instead of a victim. In this episode we discuss: How colleen built multiple companies and balanced her personal and professional lives. Why entrepreneurs can’t be “lone wolves” and how to create your support system. What it takes to be a successful entrepreneur. What you need to decide before starting a business. The one ingredient that all successful businesses have in common. Examples of how to create your ideal client profile and then find them. How to build your own community of influencers, clients, and referral sources. What opportunities to say “no” to as you grow. How to choose what professional organizations to become a part of. …and more golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”         About the Guest             Colleen Biggs is a 22-year Business Strategist who empowers Business Leaders to expand their influence through Peak Performance Habits to attract the right clients and drive more profits. She has launched over 340 businesses, is a Keynote Speaker, Author to 7 #1 International Best-Sellers with the latest being Step Into the Spotlight to Expand Your Influence, the CEO and founder of the Leap Community, and was awarded the Most Inspirational Leaders in Business and Entrepreneur of the year in 2023. Colleen serves as the CEO of three businesses including Lead Up for Women, a community that boasts tens of thousands of female entrepreneurs that are driven by their passions, support and promote others with purpose to fuel female voices with power that are leading the way for all women world-wide to dominate the entrepreneurial market. Colleen provides women with a community of entrepreneurs who take the leap daily and realize that their network is their Net Worth. A special download for those solopreneurs to get started with a 30-day business plan on me for free! https://qj979.infusionsoft.app/app/form/business-action-plan https://colleenbiggs.net/ https://linktr.ee/ColleenJaneBiggs Checkout the Leap Community: https://colleenbiggs.net/Community Connect with Colleen here: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/colleen.s.biggs LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/colleen-biggs/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/colleenbiggs/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/LeapwithColleen TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@colleenjanebiggs Connect with the Leap Community on FB: https://www.facebook.com/groups/310881170189409 Subscribe to our Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/ColleenBiggs

Happiness is something most people yearn for, and gratitude helps you create it. How to find and create happiness is important. But most people don’t think about the effect their happiness has on the people around them. You can create a “happiness and gratitude ripple effect” if you have the right strategies. That’s what I discuss in this episode with my guest, Phil Gerbyshak.     Phil is the Chief Happiness Officer of Happy AF Now, dedicated to helping organizations and their people work and live a more engaged, more productive and more happy life. His upcoming book 7 Habits of Happy AF People will be out in Q2 of 2024. When deciding on the next phase of his journey Phil considered a lot of topics that he could share with the world. He chose happiness in part because he believes that happiness is an inside job that you control your happiness or lack of happiness. It’s your choice. Over the years he encountered a lot of people that were really unhappy. Maybe unhappy with the right now, unhappy with tomorrow, unhappy with the future and more similar situations. About two years ago Phil decided that, personally, he was going to do something different.  It’s not enough to just be positive, he realized that he had to choose happiness. Which he did and now he’s sharing his journey. In this episode we discuss: Why the starting point of happiness is gratitude. The ripple effect of happiness and gratitude to those around you. How to practice gratitude every day. How to move through and beyond tough times in your life. How to recharge your gratitude and happiness batteries. Why cheering other people on helps you have a better day. Ways to charge other people up intentionally. More of the story behind Phil’s gratitude and happiness journey. …and more golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”         About the Guest             After studying sales for the past 20 years, Phil Gerbyshak realized the reason people aren't as engaged and productive as they could be is simple: it's because they don't know how to be Happy AF. So Phil saw a need and dove headfirst into studying happiness experts like Dr. Martin Seligman, Mister Rogers and Ted Lasso. Now Phil speaks about how organizations and their people can be Happy AF to be more resilient, more productive and more engaged. Sign up for the Happy AF Blog at https://HappyAFnow.com and listen to the Happy AF Show podcast at https://HappyAFShow.com

There's an artform to marketing yourself at virtual events. They should be treated with the same professionalism as live events if you want to market yourself successfully. That’s what I discuss in this episode with serial entrepreneur Daniel Ruke, better known as Ruke. Ruke has been doing 100% virtual networking for six years now. He believes that it’s the quickest and easiest way to build your brand. Unfortunately, most people don’t understand the power of virtual networking and how to successfully engage with people at virtual events.   Consider advertising; brands need repetition to get in front of their audiences. Statistics say you need to see a brand eight times before you buy whatever they’re selling. TV commercials, radio commercials and print ads are all doing the same thing. Eventually you investigate the product or service that you’ve seen eight or more times. When you’re networking virtually you get to show up to the same groups multiple times. When you do show up multiple times, you’re getting that repetition that leads to branding and marketing results. Here's another thing that most people don’t understand: At virtual events people are watching you like a television show. The power of that is you get to control what you people are seeing. That means you have control over your brand image at events. It’s important to understand that because people get curious. What books is he reading? What’s that in his background? You can show off your brand every time. That’s the greatest branding opportunity that you can do for your business at virtual events. Most people don’t take advantage of that. Personally, I’ve realized that having my book (Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea) behind me is product placement while I’m networking. Yet many people don’t think about creating opportunities like that. In this episode we also discuss: The most common (and damaging) mistakes people make at virtual networking events and how to avoid them. Why you have to value yourself before anyone else will value you or your services. How to create a professional online environment. How to present yourself and create marketing conversations in breakout rooms. What a successful "30-second commercial" looks like and how to create yours. The balance between marketing and sales. How to create Superfans that will refer you business again and again. ...and more golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”         About the Guest             RUKE is the founder of multiple companies that brings your intellectual property to life. They take Brands through the flow of create, monetize, and scale... handling their branding, marketing, and sales. 🎉 PROUD MOMENTS RUKE’s companies have worked with Intellectual Properties of: Disney, Marvel, Lionsgate Entertainment, Epic Games, and Chico’s He and his team have Successfully Launched: 200+ Products, Services, and Brands Over the Last 24+ Years Has 10 Inventions and Received a Patent for: “A System and Method for Providing a Multi-Players game Experience” in a physical space, bringing video games to life. …………… 🤘FUN FACTS Has Every Star Wars Toy Since Childhood Privately Trained as an Artist Since the Third Grade Married my Wife 3 Months After 1st Date...It’s been 27+ Years with 4 Daughters - One being Gender-Fluid :) Learn more about Ruke! www.GameChangersAssemble.com www.RUKE.com

Writing great marketing copy is an art form. Many copywriters struggle with brevity; short form copy that packs a marketing punch isn’t the easiest thing in the world to create. If you have the right copywriting and marketing strategies you will get the attention of potential clients, keep it, and convert them into clients. I discuss how to do that in this episode with my guest, Joe Martin. Joe is a Chicago-based business growth consultant who helps companies align their messaging. He has built and exited two companies, while his innovative ideas around work-life balance have been featured on WGN, FOX, and the TEDx stage. Brevity is Your Best Friend in Marketing Joe went to school for design. Part of his responsibility in his professional life after college was marrying the design part of website and marketing material projects with the copywriting part of those projects. He noticed that raising the bar with the copywriting piece often created a bottleneck. Joe would design a beautiful site and then take it to copywriters and ask them to put two sentences on the first page. They would come back with two paragraphs. Ouch. Joe’s goal with the websites he designed was to make them profitable, not just pretty. But how? You need to start by answering these questions: Who is the person you want to get the attention of and what action do you want them to take? Then it comes down to: What do you need to say to get them to take that action? How can you get that point across in one sentence? By focusing on one person. One person? Yes, one person and Joe believes one properly crafted sentence, speaking to your ideal target client, can accomplish that. A question that he gets asked more than anything else is: “How do you decide on who the person you want to talk to is?” Yes, ultimately, you’re going to have more than one client profile. It’s important to pick just one to get started and craft that sentence for them. The one you want to pick is the one you can get to. It’s the one with the best referral network, the one that is going to spend the most money with you, the one that is going to tell all their friends about you. Most importantly, it’s the one that you actually want to work with! Ask and answer: Who do you best help? Design your messaging for them, start there with one person first. Speak to Your Idea Client’s Avatar How do you focus on that one person? By developing your one marketing sentence. You need to start a conversation with that one person. Figure out what you need to say to them. This is important: When you want to create a conversation with one person, you’re listening more than you’re talking. You start by discovering the big problem they have which is why they need your help. That’s the way a great sales conversation goes: “This is the problem you have; we solve that problem, and this is how we do it.” Let’s look at that again: Number one: “If I understand correctly, this is the problem you have.” Number two: “Hey! We solve that specific problem!” Number three: “This is how we do it…” You Have Their Attention. Now What? The purpose of websites has changed in recent years. Websites were originally digital storefronts. The change is now that the highest converting websites act more like a digital salesperson than they do a digital storefront. Now it’s figuring out what we need to say to that person to get them to take the next action. Often the action is they need to get on the phone and talk to somebody. In that case you need to make that first call to action to get them to make that call. If that’s the case the first button shouldn’t say, “our services” and lead to a page of long copy most people won’t read. Let’s not have that first button say, "learn more”. Tell them exactly what you want them to do, which is schedule a call. This is why you should work with us, and this is the action I want you to take. Get them on the phone with a link to schedule a call ...

The wrong name for your product or service can be the difference between success and failure. So, how do you choose the right name? That’s what I discuss in this episode with Alexandra Watkins. Alexandra is a leading and outspoken authority on brand names with buzz. If you have ever eaten a Wendy’s Baconator, you have literally eaten the words. For nearly 20 years, she and her naming firm, Eat My Words, have created love-at-first sight brand names for countless companies including Amazon, Coca-Cola, Disney, Twitter, and Google. Alexandra has always been good with words. When she was younger, she had a role as an advertising copywriter and loved her job. Occasionally, her boss would throw her a bone and she would get to name a product or service. While she enjoyed the work Alexandra had no idea that “naming” was a profession that paid well. When she discovered that it is a lucrative profession around 20 years ago, she decided to take a leap of faith and go all in to the profession. Alexandra has a few acronyms in the book, my favorite two are the SMILE test and the SCRATCH test. Her philosophy is that a name should make you smile instead of scratch your head. People like to “get it” and feel clued in, not clueless. SMILE outlines the qualities of a super sticky name. It’s the five qualities that make a name great. The SMILE Test Suggestive: If it’s suggestive you want your name to suggest a positive brand experience and clue people into what you do. Memorable: Meaning that it’s based on something familiar that people already know as opposed to something unfamiliar and foreign. Imagery: This aids in memory, just like something based on the familiar. Legs: Meaning it lends itself to a theme, it has legs to walk on and carry itself throughout your branding and marketing messaging. Emotional: It’s important that your name makes an emotional connection with your target audience or else it will just go right over their head. What is imagery? Alexandra uses the example of a bike lock company named “Kryptonite”. When you hear the name Kryptonite you can picture something in your head because you’re familiar with kryptonite from Superman. Compare that to a similar U-shaped bike lock named “ABUS”. Your brain has no imagery when it hears that name, so there’s nothing to latch onto. Think about it, you hear that name and then you’re in the bike shop a month later and you’re trying to remember the name, maybe by picturing it. You’re going through your brain’s dusty filing cabinet to retrieve that piece of information. If it’s based on something that’s already in your knowledge base, like Kryptonite, it will be easier to remember if there’s a picture associated with it. Here are two more examples of imagery: The Church of Cupcakes. There are all kinds of things you can imagine for the Church of Cupcakes. It creates a picture in your head. A frozen yogurt franchise that she named “Spoon Me”. It’s funny and memorable and hints at the spoon you get with frozen yogurt. If the name of your product or service fails the SCRATCH test it’s time to scratch it off your list because it makes people scratch their head with confusion. Here’s what the acronym means: The SCRATCH Test Spelling Challenged: If your name looks like a typo scratch it off the list, it will forever frustrate people. Copycat: You don’t want to copy somebody else. Nobody likes copycats; we learned that early on in school. Why be somebody else when you can be yourself? In the bigger picture of things, you don’t want to open yourself up to trademark infringement. Restrictive: This is where you have a name that limits your future growth. You don’t want to get trapped with a name that pigeonholes you into one business if you’re eventually going to be doing something else. Examples include 24-hour fitness. What if eventually they don’t want to be open 24 hours? Another example is 1-800-FLOWERS which sells more than flowers...

Podcasting is about more than just download numbers, which is what most people focus on. Podcasting can be a powerful tool to grow your business if you have the right strategies. That’s what I discuss in this episode with my guest, Steve Ramona. Steve discovered his calling at a young age and is now on a mission to share his secret sauce for success. He thrives on forging meaningful connections, sharing referrals, and watching people flourish. His contagious passion for the “Law of Increase” makes his podcast "Doing Business with a Servant's Heart" so successful. This show is chock-full of inspiring stories about overcoming challenges and serving others. Getting Started in Podcasting A few years Steve got involved with a company named Pantheon in a podcasting capacity. Steve asked for advice about how to get started. The owner told Steve “Just start recording, I don’t care how you get started, what you look like or what happens on each episode. Just hit record and have fun with it.” Steve found his first guests through his network. He went to his them and simply said, “I’m launching a podcast, who wants to be a guest?” Steve had 5-10 quick email responses from people, and he was off and running. Steve believes you can use podcasting as a networking tool, even though a lot of people don’t look at it like that. They look at it as getting the guests, getting the downloads, plays, partial plays and other metrics. Networking is a much more powerful reason to have a podcast. Podcasting as a Networking Tool Regarding podcasting as a networking tool Steve pointed out a few things. When you’re on a podcast you laugh, joke, and get to know your guests. You’re also adding value to their lives because you’re promoting them. They’re excited when you get done recording. Then you both start promoting the episode to share both of your messages. It’s a win-win situation. That’s where the “Law of Increase” comes into play. This happens because of the value you’re offering them from being a guest on your podcast. As a guest, you’ve got their attention.  You’ve got them excited about the show that you’re going to be promoting so their energy level is up. Leverage that in a good way by giving them even more value by helping with their business endeavors and their energy goes up even more. That’s networking at its finest. Steve says that giving them business referrals is the gold trophy, but it doesn't have to be referrals. If they have a podcast, you can offer them resources, guests, or marketing ideas. Don’t immediately try to sell them something. Offer free resources, don’t say “Come to my coaching program, it’s only $199 a month.” People are going to want you, love you and need you down the road one way or the other when you provide value to them first. What’s going to happen at the end of the recording and marketing? Most of the time they’re going to ask you “How can I help you?” They might be able to help you find more guests, support your events if you’re in the event space, support a professional community that you’re involved with or any myriad of other things. Let’s look at that in more detail. Have an “Ask” Ready Early on Steve realized that if he wanted to build his business through his podcast, he had to have an “ask” ready when he and his guests were having discussions about helping each other. In the early days of his podcasting career, he felt he was “selling” them if he brought anything up. He soon realized that you’re never selling if you bring value to the relationship. Bringing value is a natural human interaction in successful relationships. Sometimes that value will be your product or service if it can help them solve a problem or advance their business initiatives. It could be asking them with help growing a professional community that you’re involved with, and so on. In another example, your ask could be for help with an event you’re having by asking them to invite their friends.

There’s more to success than “hard work”. If you have the right strategies and mindset, you can manifest amazing things in your personal and professional lives. That’s what I discuss with Melinda Van Fleet in this episode of the Idea Climbing podcast. Melinda is a Intuitive Energetic Business and Leadership Mentor that helps busy leaders and businesspeople achieve next level results (i.e. make more money, feel good) faster while spending less time, frustration, and money on other services/courses/programs that don’t produce the results you desire.   Hard Times Can Turn into Great Times When she was single Melinda listed all the qualities she wanted in a husband, with the important criteria of someone with a hobby. When she met her soon to be husband, he told her he loved fishing more than anything else. That checked a big box. They were soon married and, unfortunately, they were both laid off from their jobs at the same time. They sold off the stuff they didn’t need, packed up and moved to the Florida Keys. They started over completely from scratch with no money, no jobs and no family or friends in the area. Fast forward a couple years, they built a very successful sports fishing business called “Good Karma Sports Fishing”. Melinda built a very successful coaching company and her husband soon followed with his own successful coaching company. It was a journey that started with having a vision. Melinda says that everything wasn’t sunshine and rainbows, there were definitely hard times along the way. How to Start Manifesting Melinda believes that, when done the right way, everything is connected to manifesting. Unfortunately, that’s where the internet can be very misleading. There are a lot of programs out there that make manifesting sound easy. One example is the “just think positive thoughts and you can be rich overnight” effect. Manifestation done the right way starts with having a vision and putting it out there. Then comes clearing through any of the emotional health in terms of overcoming limiting beliefs, clearing blocks and recognizing triggers. Then you focus on what you want to manifest and follow the breadcrumbs that appear for you, which is your intuition. When all those things come together with divine timing that’s when everything manifests. Limiting beliefs are something that will always pop up for people, especially entrepreneurs at different stages of life. They can be dealt with by building extreme awareness where you can look in the mirror and say, “This is a limiting belief” and then work on it. That comes with practice over time. The more you can present and stay away from distractions and noise the better off you will be. You need to stay focused and be aware of your thoughts. It takes a lot of personal drive. Personal drive needs to be developed. Nowadays that is an even bigger challenge because people are getting very comfortable, especially after COVID. People realized they can live within their means and don’t want to face their fears. People don’t want to do the hard work and the hard work is the mental work. How to Ask Yourself the Right Questions You need to ask the hard questions such as “What’s my life going to look like in 10 years if I don’t step up my game?” Having some type of vision and really seeing the future helps. You need to realize that time goes by really fast. Think about the future. Ask questions about the future such as: “Do I want my life to look like this? Do I want to be in debt? Do I not want to be known as a thought leader in my field?” and so on. You need to be aware of your goals and stay grounded in them. That’s the work. In this episode we also discuss: How to know when to run away from something and when to run towards something. Your life is all about the choices you make. We discuss how to make better choices. How to tap into your intuition and develop it. How to eliminate distractions in your life.

If you want to share and clearly communicate your big idea you need to do it in small chunks of information, not a long presentation. Your big idea has to be shared in a small package. You can’t dump a ton of information on people all at once, they’re not ready to process all of that information. You understand your big idea because it sprang to life in your mind. You’ve probably researched it, mulled it over and worked on it for a while. The temptation is to try to share everything you know at once. When people listen to you, they’re tuning in to find out whether your big idea is valuable to them. Because of that you need to compress your big idea into short sound bites that are very relevant and very compelling because the attention span you get from other people is limited. If you try to say too much, you lose the opportunity to fully share your big idea. You start to compress your big idea by asking yourself “Why does this matter to the audience I’m talking to?” You must frame it in a “What’s in it for them?” package, why should THEY care? Strip out 95% of the things you’d like to say and only share the things that are relevant to them, so they’ll do what you want them to do, become a client, support your big idea, etc. It still needs to be a small message even if the solution you’re offering is a complex solution. How to Know What to Cut Out and What to Leave in Consider writing and marketing a book. The title and the subtitle are the hook. The table of contents is the next level of detail; it’s the scannable outline. The rest of the book is the details. The three strata are the main point, overview then the rest of it. This is true for your service offerings, pitches to investors or any other big idea that you’re trying to get across. Consultants are trained to do this all the time, clinical papers are written this way, and so on. This is what Steve calls a “brain friendly approach”. Your listener wants to know what matters right away then, if you’re successful with your communication, they’re prepared to listen to a little bit more. If that works, they’re ready to listen to the details. Most of the time they don’t want a lot of detail, especially right up front. Start With the Bottom Line When people get a chance to present to their target audience, often they try to say too much. What their audience wants often is the “BLUF”, or Bottom-Line Up Front. They don’t have time to wait 30 minutes for you to get to the conclusion. Give them the conclusion immediately and if they’re interested you can dig deeper if you have time. This is why you need a “brain friendly format” so that you get an opportunity to talk about the details when your target audience is receptive to listening to more. “Begin with the end in mind” ~Steven Covey In this episode we also discuss: The four rules of successful communication. The definition of a “Memory Dart” and how to create one. How to create communication agreements. The components of a “Lead Point” and how to create one. …and other golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”         About the Guest             Steve Woodruff is known as the King of Clarity. Thirty-seven years in the front lines of sales, marketing, consulting, and entrepreneurship has uniquely equipped Steve to guide others in the principles and practices of clear and effective communication. He has deep experience in corporate training and workshop facilitation for a wide variety of companies, from startups to Top Five pharma. Steve is the author of the business book Clarity Wins (2018), and the ground-breaking new book The Point (October 2023). He is the father of 5 grown men and lives in Franklin TN with his wife of 42 years. Connecting with Steve Email: steve@stevewoodruff.com Website: https://www.stevewoodruff.com

When you enter the mentoring space, you begin an amazing, life changing journey. How to navigate that journey is what I discuss with Machen MacDonald in this episode. On your journey you’ll be de-storying who you’ve been while storying who you really are. We show up differently in different situations. When you’re trying to change you have a mindset, or a story, of something like “my services aren’t valuable” or “I’m not worthy”. That’s not necessarily true, it’s just a story that you tell yourself. You need to realize that things aren’t happening to you from external sources to your detriment rather than happening for your betterment. That’s the starting point to rewrite your story and change your mindset. “Nothing is good or bad except what we make of it” When events happen, you need to be mindful of the meaning that you associate with those events, good or bad. You can do this by practicing “ADLIB” or “Advance Devine Love In Business”. Love can be found in any situation if you keep an open mind and look for it. Navigating Your Mentoring Journey for Yourself and Others When you begin to work on yourself it’s often because circumstances in your life become so frustrating that you decide to change. That is when mentors will show up if you look for them and welcome them into your life. You can find them by asking for help from people who have already faced your situation and come out on the other side. Approach each person with a compliment that shows you’ve done your research about them; “I read about how you built your business” “I heard you say _______ on a podcast and found it insightful”, etc. They help you go through your trials and tribulations. You eventually achieve the success you were looking for. After you work on yourself and get into a better place it’s time to help others along their journeys. It’s time to share the story of your journey and your new insights and awareness with those in your community that need help. Imagine that you’re a lighthouse. You come back and try to shine your light as bright as you can. That light is going to catch people’s attention that need your specific kind of help. When you are approached by potential mentees the first thing you need to do is set clear expectations. This includes things such as expected time frames to meet, what specific topics you will discuss and why you’ll be discussing them and so on. We also discuss: How to make it easy for potential mentors to say yes to creating mentoring experiences with you. How to guide your mind and create a powerful, positive mindset. How to break out of depressing and downward spiraling situations. …and other golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”         About the Guest               For over 20 years, small business owners and leaders seeking heightened clarity, confidence, and certainty have turned to Machen as their trusted guide. With a remarkable track record, Machen has empowered countless elite individuals to optimize their potential and that of their teams, enabling them to accomplish more and reach unprecedented levels of success. Machen's extensive experience as a serial entrepreneur, having successfully launched and sold five businesses, coupled with his 15-year tenure as a highly accomplished financial advisor, forms the foundation of his expertise. In 2004, he founded The ProBrilliance Leadership Institute, where he continues to make a significant impact. Learn more about Machen and get some free resources! https://probrilliance.com/goodness    

Everybody faces fear at one time or another, it’s how you deal with it that makes the difference. That’s what Kyle Dean Houston and I discuss in this episode. Fear Happens to all of Us Most people that have ever achieved anything realized that they have to move outside of comfort in order to have a transformation. To achieve something, you’re going to have to give something else up. If you want to become exponentially successful, whatever that means to you, you’re going to have to face extreme discomfort. Kyle believes that success is complete transformation, understanding what you’re made of, understanding what life’s all about, and the only way to get there is to face fear. The primary competitive advantage he’s seen in the business world is risk because risk is the one thing that people try to mitigate. As human beings we’re programmed to run away from fear. We need to face fear and move towards success. Why People Stay in Their Comfort Zone Primarily because it feels good. As humans we have internal systems that let us know when something feels good or bad. We get rewarded with bursts of serotonin from some things and because that feels good that’s what we want to run towards. Unfortunately, all of those are short term rewards. When we become conscious of this process, we realize that there are also long-term rewards that intuitively we don’t go towards until we start to see success on the horizon. We need to discover that there is pleasure on the other side of fear. The hardest way Kyle realized this is while serving what should have been a 30-year prison sentence; he shares his story in this episode along with how he reintegrated into society without ever doing email before he got out to becoming a Vice President in a two billion dollar publicly traded company. How to Get Through Fear Kyle says that he knew to become successful he had to be willing to do what everyone around him wasn’t willing to do. He realized that there was no shortage of excuses for him to quit. He decided he was going to continue to face fear and he was not going to do well for a guy who faced a long prison sentence. He decided that he was going to live up to the standards that he set to himself as a kid, to be happy and successful. Fear became the breadcrumbs leading him to discover what it was that he really wanted. In this episode we also discuss: What fears Kyle is currently facing and how he’s overcoming them. How to build your risk muscle, or risk tolerance. The one thing to do to get started facing your fears. …and other golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”         About the Guest               Kyle Dean Houston, author of Patchwork Junkie, is a speaker, author, and coach who is committed to bringing hope into the world. After walking out of prison at thirty-five with no college degree, no network, and having never sent an email, he built a highly successful career as a sales executive in San Francisco. In less than a decade, he went from earning $10 an hour to Vice President in a $2B publicly traded company. He also put multiple companies onto the list of Inc. Magazine’s fastest 500 list. Kyle’s life story is shocking, riveting, and inspiring. He currently lives in Tampa, FL with his wife and two daughters. Learn more about Kyle! www.kyledeanhouston.com  FaceBook - @kyledeanhouston, Instagram - @kyledeanhouston

When it comes to networking, the line between general networking meetings and prospecting meetings can be vague. You shouldn’t pitch someone the first time you meet them (that’s called pitch slapping); yet you need to grow your business. How to do that is what I discuss with serial entrepreneur Clay Hicks in this episode. If you focus on earning trust with the person across from you then the like and know will follow. Mutually beneficial relationships, clients and referrals can follow. You Need to Earn Trust How do you earn trust when you’re getting to know someone? The keyway to focus on earning trust is to be of service to the person across from you. Once you connect with them try to help that person in any way possible. Ask exploratory questions such as “How can I help you?” and “Who would you like to meet?”. That second question is particularly important if you have a big network of people that could help the other person. Questions for people that don’t have that big of a network include “How’s business?” “How can I be helpful with your business?" Asking questions like that is how you start to earn trust. A Unique Way to Set Up a Second Meeting Try not to have “one and done” meetings. Many networkers brag about the number of meetings they have each week. Numbers mean nothing if you’re not building your business and advancing your career. YOU need to ask for help and connections. By asking how you can help the other person first it means they are much more likely to reciprocate and help you. When you both can help each other that’s a signal that you should meet with that person again. If there’s no help either way there’s no reason for a second meeting. The litmus test is whether they tried to help you back after you helped them. Sometimes people don’t know what they’re doing so you have to help them. They might just be having an “off day”. If their target market is like yours and you believe that, with time, they might be able to help you and vice-versa then that’s another reason to have a second meeting. You can tee up the follow up meeting by asking to meet again so you can deepen your relationship. Tell them you want to know what it’s like to be their prospect. Tell them you want to know what it would be like for someone you refer to them to discuss their business. Most referrals come from past clients and deeper relationships, not first-time conversations. That’s because past clients know what it’s like to work with you. By asking them to learn about their prospecting techniques you can better refer them and vice versa. This strategy sets you both up to know what it’s like to work with the other person. We also discuss: How to ask prospecting questions without being overbearing. Guidelines for successful prospecting How to sell yourself and not just your product or service. The crossover between general networking meetings and prospecting meetings. …and other golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”         About the Guest               Clay Hicks is an entrepreneur with a portfolio of 5 different companies, an author, a speaker, and trainer on professional relationships. Clay Hicks founded his first company, H7 Network (in 2008), in the hopes of positively impacting the many under-served entrepreneurs and all sales professionals. His vision is to globally revolutionize the way business professionals “Connect” first, “Serve” with purpose, and “Ask” of their peers. H7 Network, a Franchisor, is a national B2B networking platform, In person and Virtual, for professionals to create their own network and develop champions for their business. His responsibility as the CEO is to innovate new programs, develop new markets internationally, training and development, implementing new processes for retention,

Mentoring relationships without structure can fail fast. With the right structure they can thrive. That’s what I discuss in this episode with Lisa Fain. What do you think most mentoring programs do wrong? Most mentoring programs have a “pair and pray” structure. They pair people and pray that the program succeeds. People think because they’re in an “official” mentoring program and are having mentoring conversations that they don’t need guidance on how to do it. Unfortunately for them the structure is critical to success. It’s not about prescribing structure, it’s about co-creating structure. Mentors and mentees need to discuss the terms of their mentoring relationships so they can create structure and hold themselves accountable. Terms of the mentoring relationship can be a bunch of things. It can be as simple as deciding when and where they’re going to meet, what they’re going to talk about and who is going to schedule it. It could be boundaries on what they will discuss. It could be checking in and how they’re going to provide feedback. There just needs to be structure. How to Create Trust and Give Effective Feedback Trust is a precondition for getting effective feedback. Where a lot of people go wrong is that they assume because they’re in a mentoring relationship they can freely give feedback that will be warmly received. First you need to take the time to build trust and a meaningful relationship. That means connecting; that means getting to know one another. This means that the mentors are sharing their own challenges and vulnerabilities. Lisa has received a lot of feedback about her programs that the mentees were more involved in mentoring relationships because they found out that their mentors aren’t perfect and have had challenges along the way. Mentees are sharing what their own fears and doubts are. It means connecting on a human level and knowing what’s going on in one another’s’ lives. All of those build a foundation of trust so that when you get to giving and receiving feedback you will have an ongoing conversation instead of just one session of feedback. The conversation needs to be a balance of positive and critical feedback. Feedback in a mentoring relationship is a two-way street. When you have healthy mentoring relationships, mentees can give feedback to the mentors about what’s working and what’s not working; what they want to see more of and what they want to see less of in the mentoring relationship. How to Co-Own Your Mentoring Relationships Mentoring has three primary components: A learning component A reciprocity component A co-creation component Without those three things you can’t have an effective mentoring relationship. We’ll look at co-creation first. Lisa says that there is “funny math” in successful mentoring relationships, one+one=three. There’s the mentor, the mentee and then the relationship that they co-create together and co-own. This is where trust and reciprocal feedback come into play. Reciprocity. We know intuitively that mentees gain a lot from mentoring relationships. The data also shows that because of mentoring relationships mentors become better leaders and they feel more invested in their careers. The more mentoring experiences that mentors have makes them more competent leaders. This means that mentees also give and mentors also get. Many mentees don’t initially see that. Some even think that asking for time to have conversations is a burden to their mentors. That’s not the case, that time spent is a gift to both people. Learning. Just having random conversations isn’t enough. Mentoring doesn’t happen unless there’s learning. Learning is the purpose, it’s the product and it’s the process of mentoring. Learning needs to happen to both the mentee and mentor based on the goals that they set together. Examples of learning include many things. An entrepreneurial example of a goal and learning experience is learning how to grow and scale t...

Mentoring can be a crucially important part of your personal and professional lives. The challenge is finding the right people and creating successful mentoring relationships. That’s what I discussed with Gary Anzalone in this episode. When you have a mentor, you can have a very fulfilled life because you have someone to talk to about your hopes and dreams. You have someone in your corner to give you objective feedback that you won’t get from a close friend or family member. You need someone that’s not attached to a specific outcome for you. That’s a mentor. In successful mentoring relationships you should feel challenged and supported. You don’t grow as an individual by staying in your comfort zone. While compliments are nice to hear, they don’t help you grow. Real growth happens when you’re challenged. When a mentor challenges you and you respond, you’re going to make yourself better at whatever it is they’re challenging you to do differently. When you make yourself better at something you’re growing. How do you create a safe zone to be uncomfortable? By asking the right questions, which could include the direct question “What about that makes you uncomfortable?” Early on in mentoring relationships both people realize that the purpose of the relationship is to get help and give help. It’s built on the presumption of trust. That doesn’t happen instantly, you must let it grow organically. With any relationship, time is a big factor, you must build history into it. The sharing of problems and solutions happens over time, and it just builds. It depends on the personalities, and it depends on the people. How much time does it take to formulate a good mentoring relationship beyond just a one-time call? It depends on the people. Many younger people don’t know what to expect from a mentoring relationship. In some relationships the success of the mentoring relationship depends on the mentor asking the right questions and drawing solutions out of the mentee. In more advanced relationships the mentee has an agenda. Approaching Potential Mentors How to ask someone to be your mentor. Gary believes that one of the best compliments you can give someone is to ask them to be your mentor. That means that they think enough of you and view you in a favorable light. I want to understand your way of doing things because you carry yourself professionally and you’re happy. You can’t be truly happy unless you practice gratitude. If you don’t practice gratitude you will probably be negative frequently. You must take ownership of your life and realize the decisions you make are something you must live with. You can make a decision to change the course of your life at any age. You can decide to change your life in many ways. If you want to make a change it’s time to find a mentor or multiple mentors. You are the sum of the five people that you spend the most time with, if a mentor is one of them that’s a positive. If you don’t ask you will not get. People are not going to knock on your door. Even if they don’t have the time, they will be flattered that you asked. Creating an Agenda for Mentoring Meetings After you ask, what should that first meeting look like? From a mentee point of view it should be “these are the things that I really would like to understand; these are the things that I struggle with” it could be “I need more work/life balance” or “I need more time with my family” A self-assessment is in order so you can start communicating and opening up to that mentor. The mentee needs to act and can’t sit back and wait for the mentor to tell them what to do. That’s why it’s important for the mentors to ask the right questions to bring out the answers that the mentee needs to hear. Your best self can be realized by having a mentor, now it’s time to go find one! You can get my book “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea” here!        

Episode 79! Everybody faces fear, it’s a matter of how you deal with it and move past it that matters. That’s what I discuss with Jacqueline Wales in this episode. What is Fear? Jacqueline believes that fear is imagination based. There are a lot of reasons why we can feel threatened in life, but fears are often just a story we tell ourselves to deal with discomfort. Fear is just an emotion, it’s not real. Unless you have tangible evidence, fear is just a story that you’re applying to a feeling that may or may not be true for you. What is the fear of failure and how does it come up? The fear of failure is really tied into reputation status. It’s how other people will perceive you if you fail at something. Failure is a choice, decision or expectation that did not go the way you had planned. People who are perfectionists do not want to fail; they do not want to make mistakes. The fear of failure is so profound for some people because it says something about me, I’m not good enough. That fundamentally is where fear shows up, that insecurity of self. Moving Past Fear How can you get over the fear of failure? What can you do to solve that big problem? First, take a hard look at “what’s the worst thing that could happen if this doesn’t go the way that I had planned?” “Will we recover?” is the biggest question on failure. Can you recover from it? Often the answer is a resounding yes. You make a mistake, you fix it, you move on. Failure is simply the acceptance of things that will go wrong. It’s all about what you do with it when it goes wrong, that’s the gift that you give yourself. People want to talk about something called imposter syndrome. Jacqueline believes that term is misused most of the time because fundamentally it’s about self-doubt. That can become the story that becomes the major driver of their life – “I’m not capable, I’m not good enough, I’m not deserving” and so on. Those stories are not true. If we care to analyze them and reflect on “Why am I carrying this story?” Nine times out of ten it’s a negative voice from a previous experience; someone somewhere told you that you weren’t good enough, i.e., you will fail. How can you fix that? Set a future ambition that says “I KNOW that I can reach my goals. I don’t know how I’m going to reach them, but I will reach them” Then tell yourself a new story and move past fear. We also discuss: How to get rid of the negative voices in your head. How to build confidence that will take you forward in a positive way. What the fear of success really is and how to overcome it. The brain chemistry that creates fear and how to deal with it. …and more golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea” here!         About The Guest               At only sixteen years old, Jacqueline Wales fled from her childhood home in a desperate search for happiness. Looking in all the wrong places, she left a trail of abandoned children and a pattern of self abuse that threatened her life. But that’s just the beginning of her story. From Leith, Scotland, to London, England; from the California coast to Paris, Amsterdam, New York, and Bali, Jacqueline’s life has been a journey of self-discovery, awakening, and joy in the face of fear. Jacqueline believes that being fearless is not the absence of fear, but the courage to take the next step. Today, Jacqueline is an author, keynote speaker, and trusted advisor to successful, high-achieving women. And she is an unwavering champion for being fearless. Connect with Jacqueline on LinkedIn here! Learn more about Jacqueline here!